A Forward Step Back?

A Forward Step Back?

Opening Preview Day Saturday March 24th 2018, 10am - 4pm

Ann Cook and Ann O’Daly an Exhibition of Paintings

Exhibition continues until August 17th 2018. Visits by Appointment Only Monday – Friday. Please email Emily Ball to arrange a visit

Ann O’Daly

I paint in oils and on canvas. I am interested in embodiment and what it feels like to occupy my own body.

My starting point is the paint itself and I respond to it until I find an image that gives me back a sense of something I have experienced or which simply interests me and seems to have some meaning yet to be understood. I work instinctively, intuitively and on the floor to give me greater freedom of movement. Each painting goes through many stages of reworking, layering and editing until it engages me and tells its own story.

My paintings are about isolation, a lack of connectedness, the discomfort of having a body. They are also about coming into consciousness, breathing, sensing the world about me and enjoying the freedom of movement.

Ann Cook

These paintings arise from my involvement with the body, both as an osteopath and also through the practice of Qi Gong. I work in a physical way and my paintings are to do with the body within its environment without boundary. I see the physical body as fluid and dynamic, and am interested in the interface between the body and its environment: the space in between.

Subsequently my references are indirect and non-visual as I am responding to a sense of what is felt. I paint in acrylic, usually on large canvases. The compositions are abstract, elemental and textural. The paintings usually undergo a process of layering and erosion over months adding both complexity and ambiguity. Sometimes they undergo generations of radical change, creating new possibilities to be explored until they find their own stillness.

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Event Details

Start Date 24-Mar-2018 10:00 am
End Date 17-Aug-2018 4:00 pm
Location Seawhite