Inspirational landscape art to grace Laois arts centre on 25th anniversary in Portlaoise

Laois man and art gallery curator Kevin Kavanagh is presenting new paintings by a Irish-based Sweedish artist to mark the 25th Anniversary of the Dunamaise Arts Centre in Portlaoise.

Cecilia Danell, who is Galway-based, features in the exhibition with a selection of works inspired by nature in her Scandanavian homeland. She regularly returns to her family farm in Sweden to walk and gather research material for paintings and sculptures. 

She says the experience of being in the landscape, along with the physical process of painting in the studio, results in works that detach themselves from the photographic source material. MORE BELOW PICTURE.

She says she walks and traces an environment that she knows intimately, happening upon decaying remnants of human activity, further upending the romantic notion of nature as untended wilderness.

She adds that her recent and ongoing research interests include the psychogeography movement and the psychological impact place has on a person, speculative fiction and science fiction novels. She says that she is struck by humanity’s ability to persevere and adapt in adverse circumstances in these books.

"The human urge to find solace in a primeval landscape grows increasingly stronger amidst the uncertainty of our current condition. Yet wilderness is, for the most part, a construct and the places she depicts are managed forest landscapes," she says on her website. MORE BELOW PICTURE.

Danell is the 2022 recipient of the RHA Hennessy Craig Award for painting, the ESB Keating Award at the 190th RHA Annual Exhibition, a 2017 Arts Council Next Generation Award and the 2011 Wexford Arts Centre Emergence Award and has received several bursary and project awards from the Arts Council.

Cecilia Danell is represented by Kevin Kavanagh who runs an art gallery in Dublin. A book on Danell’s work with an essay by  was published by the gallery in 2021.

The exhibition runs from March 22 to April 27. It opens on Friday, March 22 with a reception from 6pm.