ANTOINETTE O'MAHONY
ABOUT ME
"Making sense of my world through colour, line & shape."
Antoinette is an abstract artist, originally from Limerick, now living in Galway on the West Coast of Ireland.
She creates playful, intuitive & colourful abstractions in collage, paint & stitch. These processes can be evidenced individually or, as in her larger sized pieces, all three techniques are used together to create her acrylic & emulsion on canvas (sewn) paintings.
Her artworks start out as collage compositions or quick sketches of soft geometric & organic shapes. The sketches are mostly created on squared maths copies & the collages are created using either painted fabric, paper or card. The act of both sketching within a grid & cutting and pasting pieces & fragments, allows for chance and intention, surprise and control, rationality & intuition.
The artist aims to balance an intense colour palette with an energetic array of shapes, while still upholding a purposeful composition.
The colour in the artworks are often derived from a preconceived idea or memory, or the colours emerge out of the emotional response arising from them.
"I love to combine strong colours and shapes, yet keep the work inherently sensitive"
The artist's love of colour, shape & texture is apparent in the various materials, mediums & processes she uses -
paint (acrylic & emulsion), thread, sewing machine, wool, fabric, paper, & card - a multitude of tools all offering the opportunity to express herself visually.
Antoinette is a maker, a colourist, a 'learn by doing' artist, with an interest in how a painting is conceived & experienced when there is an addition of a craft element to it.
Amongst the many artists whom have influenced her, she draws much of her practice from Matisse, Lee Krasner, Francis Davison, Georgia O’Keefe, Frederick Hammersley, Robert Diebenkorn, Helen Frankenthaler.
"In rediscovering & thinking about my stories & memories, I am creatively reframing and visually reimagining them. As a mother with children myself now, my work gives form to my impressions & feelings of my past which in turn informs my present. My art is a collection of stories & thoughts translated into my most comfortable form of language - that of shape & colour."
Alongside her own art, she teaches design, graphics, textile printing, embroidery & collage techniques to adult learners in Galway City.