Artists Statement

Clodagh Holahan, having graduated from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin.has spent her working life teaching Art and Design in Ireland and Germany while maintaining her own art practice. Returning back to live in Ireland coincided with the Pandemic and subsequent Lockdowns.

Coming home was not easy, so much had changed in the intervening years, resulting in a feeling of isolation.  A bit like a bird whose wings had been clipped, or not fully formed. Sometimes trapped in a hawthorn tree.  

Having always had a keen interest in gardening and nature, Clodagh Holahan volunteered in the Upper Paddock Biodiversity Garden, It was a good way to involve herself with the local community, while supporting the ecosystem.

With restrictions in place there was a certain freedom of being present.  The Upper Paddock Biodiversity Garden volunteer group formed a social distance collective, and time, which seemed endless, was given over to observation, research, investigation, walking and of course gardening.

The global clock had stopped. Friendships were formed.

The artwork is response to the time spent together, but separate in this our place of nature. It focuses on the natural world, as found in the garden and discoveries on the many walks exploring new terrains, little known places, together with neglected and forgotten ruins and monuments.

About Artist Clodagh Holahan

Clodagh Holahan is a Fine Arts graduate from the National College of Art and Design, Dublin and is a practicing Artist.

Most of her Artworks are inspired by the natural environment, reflecting her love of nature, her life experience and interests. Holahan demonstrates a love of pattern and decoration. She works in various media including: pencil, ink, gouache, tempera, watercolors, oils, acrylics and photography. She also sculpts in bronze, through which she explores emotional themes in semi-abstract human forms.

Holahan has exhibited paintings and sculptures throughout Europe, the USA and in Australia.

Before leaving Ireland for Germany in the mid 1990s, Holahan exhibited in the RHA, RUA, the Oireachtas Exhibition and in the Independent Artists, as well as in private exhibitions. (Trinity College, RDS, Galerie Langlois, Caudwell Gallery),

Public Commission by the Belfast City Parks of a bronze cat in the Cat Garden in Belfast Castle perched on the edge of the fountain in the garden. 

Holahan taught Art and Design in Callan Co. Kilkenny. In Germany she also taught Art and Design at the Bavarian International School in Munich.

Holahan co-authored “Art Craft Design” (Gill Education publishers) - the Art textbook of choice used in many schools in Ireland and Internationally. 

She set up and ran a weekend Art School for 10 years, just outside Callan, known as Lakyle Art School. Holahan served as: President/ Secretary and PR Officer of the Irish Art teacher’s Association.

She was seconded by the Irish Department for the introduction of a new Art and design course. She was also on the Stamp Design committee of An Post for 3 years in Ireland and designed 3 First Day Covers for them (one of them a winning design).

Holahan returned to Ireland in 2016, and she started to exhibit her artwork in Ireland again in 2017, during the Kilkenny Arts Festival.

In 2018 she joined TCAF, (Thomastown Creative Arts Festival) and apart from 2020, (when everything was shut down due to Covid) she has exhibited every year with them. She also held a few other exhibitions during these years, one in the Watergarden in Thaomastown, one in Graiguenamanagh and one in Mitchelstown Co.Cork.

During the height of Covid, 2020, Holahan attended many Zoom Art presentations and workshops run by the VAI, Kilkenny Art Office and some private artists, She also presented one herself.

NATURAL DESIGNS BY CLODAGH HOLAHAN CAN BE VIEWED UPSTAIRS IN THE WATERGATE THEATRE GALLERY UNTIL 30 JUNE