Artist Statement

Frances O’Reilly lives on the edge of the Mourne Mountains, County Down, in the North of Ireland. She works primarily in the disciplines of painting, photography, and moving image.

Her work is mostly concerned with the relationship between colour and shape, developing visual stories with a language of geometric based form, pattern and motifs, to which colour is central. These kaleidoscopic shapes configure, disperse, coalesce, and sometimes jar, while actively forming a highly energised rhythm.

Other pieces evolve in a slower more meditative way, which involves layering, taking away and consciously leaving traces, until the piece reaches its resolution. In this way, she attempts to touch on the ‘feeling of place’ and its residual afterlife. The intertwining of the natural landscape and the human spirit is a common thread in her work. The paintings are a form of mapping, both the internal and external landscape.

Photographic imagery works in tandem to her painting. Currently, the main subject is the physical landscape and the incidental details of everyday life.

Rather than being used as direct reference for painting, the elements of light, colour and composition she encounters, weave through her paintings in an important, subliminal way.

Awards

2024 - Debi O’Hehir Award, Artist Residency Tyrone Guthrie Centre

Solo Exhibitions

2025 – Down Arts Centre, Downpatrick

2019 - Within, Strule Arts Centre, Omagh

2018 - On the Edge of Green, Market Place Theatre, Armagh

Group Exhibitions

2023 - Lodestar School of Art Leuven, Brussels

2022 - GSA Open Studio, Reid Building, Glasgow

2021 - Hambley and Hambley Gallery, Enniskillen

2021 - Lodestar School of Art Glenstall Abbey, Limerick

2018 - Fox Gallery, Falmouth School of Art, Cornwall

2017 - Cairde Visual, Model Arts Centre, Sligo

2016 - Kunst Salon, Kleyn Proffijtlann, Leiden

2015 - April Pop-Up, GSA McLellan Gallery, Glasgow

2015 - Burren College of Art Summer Show, Co Clare

2013 - City of Culture, Gordon Gallery, Derry

2012 - Relative Positions, Atelier Molenpad, Amsterdam

2010 - Inner Space, Trongate Theatre, Glasgow

2003 - 2008 Annual Summer Show, Seabright Gallery, Co Down

2001 - Centre d’Art i Natura, Farrera, Spain

1999 - Small Works, Newry Arts Centre, Co Down

1997 - Street Photography, Belfast Exposed Photography, Belfast

1995 - Photo Intaglio, Belfast Print Workshop, Belfast

1993 - Photovoice Community Project Corn Exchange, Cambridge

1990 - Black and White Photojournalism, Riverside Theatre, Co Derry