Karen McLaughlin: “We are a part of the ecosystem and of the land”

Starting this evening at 6pm, contemporary Irish artist Karen McLaughlin, who hails from Donegal, will present her new solo exhibition titled Hidden Light in Ranelagh Arts. A selection of about 30 abstract paintings, the widely personal collection of work is “shaped by movements through the landscape,” the painter tells me on the eve of her opening reception.

“It's an evolution from my last collection, which was called Quiet Horizons,” she continues, insisting on the importance of her creative process in the final product. “It’s about movements in nature. It's looking at the landscape, particularly paths, dunes, and places that might be less traveled along the coastlines. It's about immersing the body in nature, but also looking within – an expression of the landscape, through the inner world, and the life that exists beneath the surface.”

Born and raised in Donegal, McLaughlin underlines the centrality of her home county in her output.

“It starts there,” she says. “It starts by being out in the land and in nature. It's almost like something I don't control.

“There's something very special about Donegal, visually and emotionally. Even the terrains of the land. The feeling you have when you get into the sea there is very different from anywhere else in the world. It has the boglands and it has the lakes, it has the old ancient forts... There's a lot of those shapes that come through in the work, and that feeling of it being deeply rooted in my own history.”

 

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Painted between the Byre studio in Inishowen and a home studio in Dublin, the pieces that make up Hidden Light are profoundly marked by the movement between the two places.

“If a piece isn't working or gets stuck, I'll bring it to Dublin. and with the energy of the city, it'll start to come out and say something else. When I'm in Dublin, I'm walking along the canal and in urban spaces, and I see, even in the water, that life wants to happen.”

Another form of movement explored through McLaughlin’s work are the relationships between ourselves and the land we inhabit, and how our own human experiences shape the way we view nature. Do we create the land, I ask the painter, or does it make us into who we are?

“There is definitely a push and pull between the two,” the artist offers. “The land really does shape us more than what we know and what we'd like to believe.

“We are a part of the ecosystem and of the land. But right now, human beings feel like we do shape the land, and like our imprint is much more important than what it is. There's been so much destruction by man, and we're at a point now where we're desperately trying to pull back and come back to nature. It's really beautiful to see: the voice is getting stronger for people who are waking up to a realisation that we need to have this relationship and respect for the land.”

Running until September 5, the Hidden Light exhibition was curated by Dino Notaro, with whom McLaughlin describes her working relationship as “really fabulous,” and who managed to easily find a through line in the body of work.

“With the series, I knew that the paintings all told a story, and they were a story within themselves. One thing Dino said is that, when the art goes into the space, the work will tell you where it needs to go. Once we got the pieces into the gallery, it came together so fast and so beautifully – and Dino had a sense of how it would work. He was very instinctual.”

• Hidden Light runs from August 6 to September 5 at Ranelagh Arts. Click here for more information.