The motif of the flower is the starting point for this new body of work by Casey Walshe. The paintings are love letters to, memories of, and portraits of lovers and friends. Walshe explores the complexities around the act of flower giving and receiving, an activity that happens for most special occasions. It represents generosity, care and sentiment, and particularly in romantic circumstances – bravery.
The paintings in this exhibition point to abstraction and self authorship. The paintings are love stories branching from the tradition of minimalist figurative abstraction.
In the process of making, pressing questions have emerged about memory, queer desire, fantasy and reality. Walshe is now assembling their most autobiographical work, dealing with themes of discomfort, lust, growth, expansion and retraction, much like the cyclical stages of a flower.
Emotion and the lived experience play a valuable part in the formal decisions of painting, the paint is applied carefully, delicately and slowly. Walshe’s images consider ideas of arrangement and the point at which, through the process of interpretation and deconstruction, a form alludes to a story and becomes something it previously was not.
Artist Biogs:
Casey Walshe is an artist primarily working in painting. They studied at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. They have recently received The Next Generation Award from The Arts Council of Ireland 2022 and have been twice shortlisted for The Hennessy Craig Award 2022 and 2024. Previous solo exhibitions include Come on baby at Limerick City Gallery of Art 2023 and Beatland at Pallas Projects Dublin 2017. Previous group exhibitions include The Pleasure Ground at Rathfarnham Castle, Dublin 2022, Paipear at Hang Tough Gallery, Dublin 2022, WE CAN DANCE, a site specific project in West Cork 2021, and ARTWORKS at Visual Carlow 2019. Their work is included in a number of Irish state collections such as Limerick City Gallery of Art 2023, Trinity College Dublin 2021, The Arts Council of Ireland 2020, The Office of Public Works 2017, The Royal College of Surgeons 2016 and The Central Bank 2010. Casey lives and works in Dublin City.
Una Sealy RHA is a Dublin based painter, and has been a Member of the RHA since 2010. In 2021 she was appointed as the inaugural Professor of Art at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI). She is a graduate of Dun Laoghaire College of Art (now IADT, Fine Art Painting, 1980); UCD (Higher Diploma in Arts Administration 1989); and RCSI, (MSc in Anatomy for Artists 2021). She has won several awards including the Ireland-US Council/Irish Arts Review prize for portraiture at the RHA in 2011. She has held eleven solo exhibitions to date, and her work has been selected for many curated shows in Ireland and abroad. In 2019, she was one of ten artists invited by the Dept of Foreign Affairs to exhibit in China to mark 40 years of Ireland/China diplomatic relations. She has recently been commissioned to paint major portraits for Waterford County Council, Dublin City University and NUI Galway.
Una is a tutor in drawing and painting at the RHA School where she has developed a teaching module on Anatomy for Artists in association with RCSI.
She was a judge on both series of RTE’s Painting the Nation in 2016 and 2017.
Image: Casey Walshe, Forget (detail), 2023, Oil on board, 30 x 35cm, Image courtesy of the artist
#TENDER_RHA
The RHA Ashford Gallery is supported by Curator Paints.