Hughie O’Donoghue – A Need For Gardens XI, 2013. (Click on image to enlarge).
Hughie O’Donoghue – A Need for Gardens XII, 2013 (click on image to enlarge).
A Need for Gardens, Hughie O’Donoghue’s exhibition at Marlborough Fine Art in Mayfair, London, until June 1, is based on his commission to produce two stained glass windows for the Henry VII Lady Chapel in Westminster Abbey. For the last two years he has been working on 30 full scale painterly cartoons now being translated into glass for installation this month. The motif for the windows is the English flower garden and in particular the lily.
The process of transferring the layered and painterly aspects of the artist’s work into the medium of glass has been one of intense experimentation. This experimentation and many visits to Barley glass studio in York has led to a way of working in glass distinct from traditional forms. The artist has placed emphasis on the chromatic possibilities of glass and how colour, line and form might be integrated into the unique, late Gothic, architectural setting of the Lady Chapel (1503-1512).
The artist’s immersion in this process has inevitably led to a cross fertilisation with his own practice as a painter leading to an entirely new body of 19 paintings on paper, which are a direct result of his experiences of working in glass and his involvement with the imagery of the flower garden and the voluptuous qualities of flowers. All 19 of these beautiful works are on show at Marlborough Fine Art.
Manchester born Hughie O’Donoghue lives and works in London and Mayo. He has had exhibitions at many galleries including Abbot Hall, Kendall, Leeds Art Gallery, the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, the Imperial War Museum, London, Birmingham Art Gallery, and the Haus der Kunst, Munich.