Trevor Geoghegan

TREVOR GEOGHEGAN has a ready made subject near at hand the scenic mountainous area around the upper reaches of the Liffey in Wicklow. He paints it again and again but not exclusively his present exhibition also includes landscapes from the west Connemara, Doolin etc. However, it all ends up pretty much Geoghegan style, with plenty of heather, foaming streams, moorland and woodland.

The vision is conventional, but it is not vapid or hackneyed, and Geoghegan is well skilled in his craft, knowing how to relate foreground to middle ground and so on. It is "picturesque" nature, but not picture postcard nature, with a real sense of emotional engagement. The angles of composition are varied The Yellow Field, one of the best pictures in the show, is seen from above and the skies are generally alive, not merely filled in.

Geoghegan's most obvious limitation is his colour sense, which tends to anchor in a green brown tonality and his browns are rather yellowish and hard on the eye. That, to be sure, is the tonality of Irish bogland, but it is subtler than that in actuality. The unrelieved, heavy black frames probably emphasise this factor.

There is a softer, more sensitive touch in the few watercolours on display, and the two charcoal drawings are excellent if only there had been a higher proportion of them!