Sharon Leahy-Clark

 

All the strange things

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4th - 26th May 2024

 

"Trying to make sense of a seemingly absurd existence, my work questions and proposes a different view – where the surreal and strange and ‘other’ are honoured and elevated.I cross boundaries into literature, poetry, sound, all of which inform my images. I also plough my own experiences of life - my background, my present, struggles, love, pain, illusions. My experience is also a shared experience. The images I create have a familiarity, something recognised with which the viewer can find a way in. I use repetitions and rhythms, patterns, symbols, syncopation. I work over the images with line and marks and I erase and rebuild to create something that is not still, but is restlessly poised precariously to topple, move, fly away, or explode. The images I create are not going quietly - I obliterate and glorify with colour. The black background I work on acts as a veil into the unknown. It hints at night and space, a beyond, somewhere else, a darkness we all negotiate as nobody really knows what this is, this life. I am reproposing what is accepted as stable and ‘normal’ and I am saying “I’m not that, nobody is” and instead I am saying all we ever have is all the strange things that we try to make sense of and which present a wonderful possibility of difference."