Mary Dillon, Artist in Residence.
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Mary Dillon is originally from Kilkenny, but moved to Roscrea in 1984 to teach in the Christian Brothers Secondary School. She now lives just outside Roscrea, with her husband Tom and her two daughters, Kate and Hannah, where she works from her studio at home.
Mary has no formal training in art but has been painting for as long as she can remember. She first exhibited her work during Kilkenny Arts Week at the age of thirteen.
The Abbey Court Hotel, Nenagh, commissioned her to paint a series of architectural landscapes based on the Nenagh and North Tipperary area. As a result of this series other corporate commissions came her way. The Adelaide and Meath Hospital Society commissioned her to paint a series of watercolours of the then new hospital in Tallaght. This was followed by Pimpernel International who commissioned Mary to paint a series of paintings based on the castles of Ireland.
More recently the Bank of Ireland have added her work to their art collection, and five of her paintings belong in the OPW art collection. Her paintings now belong in many prestigious public and private art collections, including The Hodson Bay Hotel, Athlone, The Malton Hotel, Killarney, The Hibernian Hotel, Kilkenny, and Áras an Uachtaráin.
In 1999, Mary retired from teaching. By this time she had begun to discover a new passion – flowers and her garden and the natural outcome were her new paintings of flowers and natural forms. She exhibited these for the first time in 2000 and her style of painting has continually evolved since then. Mary continues to have a keen interest in botany and gardening and takes her inspiration from her garden, local hedgerows, woodlands and the midland bogs. Mary’s unique style reveals the power and vibrancy of watercolours at their best. Her work has been critically acclaimed on television, and in the national print media.
Mary has had opportunities to enjoy residencies in the Cill Rialaig Artists’ Retreat, Co. Kerry and in the Tyrone Guthrie Arts Centre in Annamakerrig, Co. Monaghan where she has been able to develop her painting both in watercolour and in oils. She has enjoyed opportunities to paint in an artists’ retreat in Skiathos, Greece. She also paints in France and Spain where the colours and light of the Mediterranean have influenced her intense, yet delicate watercolour paintings in particular. She is also strongly influenced by her Kerry roots and over the past few years has begun to paint the sea in the west of Ireland, through the medium of oils.
Mary has shown her work in galleries in Belfast, Clonmel, Dublin, Dungarvan, Galway, Kerry, Kilkenny, Nenagh and Wexford. She regularly exhibits her work during Kilkenny Arts Week and at the Wexford Opera Festival.
Mary’s next project is to develop a series of paintings, based on her monthly visits to the Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew, London, following an invitation there from one of the managers, who had seen her work. She would hope to have this work completed in 2010 and to follow with a series based on the botanical gardens in Glasnevin, Dublin,