Islands and Cities exhibtion at Newington Library 31st May – 26th June 2010
The forthcoming Islands and Cities exhibition at Newington Library will be the second joint exhibition for award-winning local painter and photographic artist, father and daughter, Kevin and Rhiannon Connelly.
Kevin Connelly – Painter Landscape paintings of the Pentland Hills have won Kevin two first prizes (2004 and 2008) and one commendation (2006) in the last three biennial Pentland Inspirations competitions. In this exhibition, he will exhibit work painted on the islands of Iona and Orkney.
Kevin Connelly is primarily a landscape and portrait painter. Largely self-taught, but with some formal tuition which started in the 1980’s when he joined an outdoor sketching class at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee. There were several aspects of this class which made it worth the weekly drive from Edinburgh to Dundee. It was landscape painting, it was in the countryside around Dundee that he knew well from his youth in that city, it was painting on-site in all weathers, and it was taught by James McIntosh Patrick – possibly the best-known local artist in the area, with a reputation as a good teacher, and arguably one of the finest landscape painters in Scotland of the 20th Century. Encouraged by his progress, Kevin later enrolled in life drawing and portraiture classes at Edinburgh College of Art.
A member of Pentland Art Club, Kevin has attended private classes with painters he admires, has spent summer days painting outdoors with friends who are professional painters, and has painted widely in different parts of Scotland. In addition to contributing to club exhibitions, he has previously shown in galleries in the Borders, Angus and Perthshire.
Rhiannon Connelly – Photographic Artist
Edinburgh-based photographer Rhiannon Connelly uses a vintage Polaroid SX70 camera to create what she calls ‘Polaroid paintings’, an unusual technique which in recent years has become a recognised branch of photography in its own right. Developed by Dr Edward Land and designed to fit into a man’s shirt pocket, the first cameras of this type were sold in 1972. Four decades on, with the discontinuation of all Polaroid films, artists are now using up the last of their film stock.
Polaroid film allows the manipulation of the emulsion for a short period to create a dreamlike image halfway between a photograph and a painting. It is unique and unrepeatable, projecting the individual vision of the artist in the same way as an original painting does. The photograph is then scanned and printed to create a much larger final image, which Rhiannon presents on museum quality canvas blocks. Computers are only involved to colour adjust the image for printing, not to create the manipulation.
Rhiannon chose to use her final supplies on an ambitious year-long project to photograph twelve European cities. She has completed the photographic part of this project and is now preparing the images for exhibition, previewing a selection here.
Contact: info@rhiannonconnelly.com Etsy: Starry Blue Sky @Starrybluesky
