WHAT MATTERS MIND OVER MATTER OR MATTER OVER MIND

Join us on Friday 22nd October at 5.30pm in Mermaid's Gallery for official opening of this exhibition by Daniel Kennedy. The exhibition will be opened by Helen O’Donoghue Senior Curator: Head of Engagement and Learning at IMMA. This celebration will also include a reading from a specially commissioned text by Sara O’Rourke, Department of Anthropology, Maynooth. All welcome.

Mermaid is delighted to present the debut solo exhibition of work by emerging artist Daniel Kennedy.

Kennedy (b.1990) lives and works in Glasthule, working primarily in the medium of acrylic on canvas. Throughout Daniel’s work he explores the human condition, searching for and portraying the complexity of the human experience.

Daniel is drawn over and over to the human face and its boundless expressions, returning again and again to the features, where with expressive skill and immense sensitivity he explores multifaceted notions of the self, intuitively displaying gentle and subtle narratives of autonomy, pain, loss, joy, happiness and gratification.

'Art is like a blanket that wraps around my soul in the coldest of weathers, and those dreams are my art, a sort of world within a world within a world of dreams that I live in.’’

Daniel’s approach is instinctive. He never plans a work. Instead, he says he needs to “empty his mind” to paint, often working on a very large scale and in multiple disciplines. He is influenced by Picasso, Francis Bacon and Jean-Michel Basquiat (who was also self-taught), with whom Daniel shares an eye for vibrant colour and expressive forms. His work is a powerful example of the creative impulse free from artistic conventions, and he skilfully and unapologetically creates a vibrant and vital space of personal significance for the viewer.

Daniel previously exhibited at Mermaid Arts Centre in 2018 in the group exhibition Insideout / Makers, which featured selected art work from 14 artists working within Autism Initiatives and was curated by Keshet Zur.