Suzy O'Mullane's latest show, Trajectory Through Time and Space, at the Blue Leaf Gallery in Fairview, Dublin, will stop you in your tracks.
Haunting and harrowing, it attempts to deal with the cataclysmic loss of her beautiful young daughter, Róisín, to a “really nasty” accident in Amsterdam in 2004. Nine months later her husband of 18 years died, followed three months later by the death of her father. She emerged from this epoch of loss to paint deeply moving portraits of grief. Crows and wolves stalk these works, which are mostly executed in slashing charcoal, oil crayon, and the shocking, electric blue evident in Keeper of the Wings (below left). They are “painted sonnets from the heart”, grounded by self-portraits of almost unbearably naked honesty and vulnerability.
There is the piercingly sad Lullaby for Róisín, and Róisín Dubh, both portraits of her daughter. Linking is an extraordinary double portrait, with features barely sketched in. Warrior (top left) is a wonderful portrait of her fellow artist Michael Mulcahy.
Fifty next year, Suzy O’Mullane has been painting full time since completing a postgraduate course in 1995. Her work will endure and deserves to be seen.
(www.blueleafgallery.com)