Catherine
Hickey

My name is Catherine Leavy Hickey. Growing up in the countryside in the Irish midlands has given me a deep appreciation of landscape, nature and authenticity. Since my childhood, I have liked to draw and paint. One of my early memories is of my father bringing home art paper, pencils, crayons and a compass. I remember him sitting down at the kitchen table and showing my brother and I the different ways we could use the compass to draw. I can still remember the feeling of excitement and happiness as I coloured in the resulting flowerlike designs.

I appreciate all genres of art but have grown to appreciate the expressionist work of American Mark Rotko and Dublin-born Sean Scully. Growing up, I have always been inspired by the impressionist movement and those who laid its foundations as well as post-impressionists Cezanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh together with Irish counterparts such as Roderic O’Conor and Paul Henry.

My career path in life led me to study Visual Communications and become a Graphic Designer - a profession I worked in for 19 years before making the decision to stay at home fulltime to raise our family. In recent years, I have gone back to study in the areas of digital media, management and innovation. However, my lifelong interest in art and painting has led me to explore more what has previously been a hobby. 

The attached works are from my first exhibition of artwork entitled ‘Finding Joy’. The work was created this Summer, 2022. Although creating it came in the aftermath of having processed a very difficult experience, I feel it holds relevance for all of us post pandemic. ‘Finding Joy’ provides an escape from the often mundane realities of everyday life but conversely,  joy is often found in the mundane.

I would class my current work as abstract expressionist. My intention is, firstly, to experiment with colour. The subject matter is secondary. I currently work in acrylic, limiting my palette to black, white and three other colours (cyan, magenta and yellow), mixing them to achieve my desired colours. This provides an element of challenge. The subject matter is abstract flashes of fleeting memories: a lemon sitting beside a lime in the fruit bowl in the kitchen, a gourmet ice pop enjoyed on holidays, a fox dashing across the road glimpsed while driving home at night. I like to use rough brush strokes going in different directions in an attempt to give depth to the work.