OnTheTown: A new exhibition of paintings at the Hallward Gallery explores "personal memories of home" and many of "the half-forgotten images" of childhood, according to the artist, Eoin Mac Lochlainn.
"When you are working with paint, colour, shapes, it's only afterwards you figure out what it's about," he said at the opening.
The show, which was opened in Dublin this week by Eithne Carr RHA, follows a recent exhibition in Kilmainham Gaol this summer, where Mac Lochlainn also "explored childhood memories" but "in a more politically themed way", he said. "This is more personal," he added.
The Kilmainham show was seen by more than 45,000 visitors, according to Pat Cooke, manager and curator at Kilmainham Gaol. It was "about idealism, about where Ireland is today, and about the blood sacrifice of 1916", said Mac Lochlainn. "Memory is not as exact as you think. You can't get to it."
A grid, which features in many of his new paintings, "represents that distance" from memory, the artist explained.
In one painting, Carr indicates the grid or veil is the fireguard in the house on Albany Road in Ranelagh where Mac Lochlainn grew up. "He has found that the veil can be drawn aside. The resulting pictures are very beautiful and really demand a lot of good looking at them," she said.
Among those at the show were Dr Peadar Mac Mághnais; Niall Bergin, supervisor at Kilmainham Gaol; Noel and Margaret Cappock, from Skerries, Co Dublin; and Fr Ralph Egan, curate in Huntstown, Dublin 15.
It was the colours in Gairdín na mBláth, a series of six paintings, that appealed most to Gerard Bennett, manager of Epic, the new national programme dealing with alcohol and drug abuse in the workplace.
"It's the colours. There's just something mysterious about it. You can't help wondering about what's in there. It intrigues me," he said.
Eoin Mac Lochlainn's exhibition at the Hallward Gallery, 65 Merrion Square, Dublin 2, runs until Thur, Sept 15