Ruth O’Donnell

Her still life prints focus on the salient detail of form and pattern built up in successive layers of ink. She emphasises the sensuality of colour, the tactile quality of the print medium and the abstract structure of the image, often using shadow as a compositional device. The objects in her images are sometimes contemporary equivalents of those objects we overlook in master paintings, sometimes references to literature, sometimes things from the narrative of her own life. Or from where these worlds touch and overlap.

Recent exhibitions include: Surface and Depth, two-person exhibtion, with Swedish artist Eva Grytt, Original Print Gallery, Temple Bar; RHA Annual Exhibition (2010); Winter Island, Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris; Artist’s Proof, Chester Beatty Library (209); O’Donnell ’07, Áras Éanna, Inis Oírr, Aran Islands – solo exhibition (2007); Pygmalion, Original Print Gallery, Temple Bar; Observations, Lemon Street Gallery, Dublin – solo exhibition (2006); Grinneas Súil, Inis Oírr, Aran Islands – solo exhibition; 5eme Biennale Internationale de Gravure, Liege, Belgium; Gardens of Earthly Delight, Chester Beatty Library (2005); The Cracked Lookingglass, Graphic Studio Gallery, Dublin, New York and Stockholm – joint curator (2004); Kilcock Art Gallery, Co. Kildare – two-person exbition; Holy Show, Chester Beatty Library (2002); New Works, Graphic Studio Gallery – solo exhibition (2001) and Art/Art, National Gallery of Ireland (1998).