Fiona Keane, an Irish artist based on the Côte d’Azur, will be presenting an exhibition of her current works in Nice this September.
Anyone will tell you that the French Riviera is replete with artists of all varities. It is always nice when someone pitches up with a talent that is gentle, intelligent and interesting, without hammering your eyes or making your brain go into surreal overdrive.
This artist is the lovely Irish belle, Fiona Keane, who will be launching her ‘Lines, Layers & Illusions’ exhibition chez Julie Guittard Fleuriste in Nice on the 19th September.
Fiona has a great lilting way of speaking which is very easy on the ear which is probably because she hails from Dublin, a town known for its soft accent – excluding Temple Bar! She has worked as a painter, illustrator, mural artist, photographer, screen printer …. the list goes on …. in Dublin, London, Lyon, and now Nice.
Currently Fiona is working with layers, creating beautiful, captivating pieces with photographs and fabrics, resulting in rich and attractive mixed media pieces.
She says that her work “… deals with images transforming. As we are lead from one thought to another, one action to another, we are led here from one image to another. Each photograph inspires different responses in the surrounding collage and each could have gone in a multiple of different directions…A sense of mystery prevails as the surrounding paintwork/collage with fabric or paper becomes sometimes more, sometimes less real than the photo itself.”
She continues – “Most of the photographs taken are of façades with windows (eyes) and doors (mouths) the eyes can be hidden by shutters or wide open to reflect the world opposite. The Irish philosopher George Berkeley wrote ‘To exist is either to be perceived or to perceive’. The more we perceive, the more we exist. The photographer widens our perspectives. We look at the façade and beyond it at the same time. There is a multiple of potential viewpoints.”
Ok, fine … me, I am going to enjoy the pieces hoping to grab some time with Fiona – really think you owe it to yourself to take some time out to enjoy some great, considered, and accessible creative art, something to take home perhaps!!
The exhibition runs from 20th September until 6th October in Julie Guittard Fleuriste in Nice.
CONTACT DETAILS
Julie Guittard Fleuriste
5, rue Dalpozzo
06000 Nice
Tel: 04 97 08 33 12
Lead image courtesy Fiona Keane (photographer George Crawley); all other photographs © Mike Colquhoun
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