Gemma Billington

Gemma Billington ‘The Space Between’

The works of Turner, Jack B Yates, Matisse and present day contemporary artist Hughie O Donoghue are much admired by Gemma and she admits that she doesn’t really think that you can be influenced by other artists but can be inspired by the subject that they are drawn to. Gemma’s main inspiration comes from the western coast of Ireland huddled on the edge of Europe where she feels true magic really happens.

Born a catholic, the ‘eight of ten children’ was brought up in household where the rosary was recited each night. Her religion is now one with nature and art. She believes a relationship with painting can be healing both for the artist and any viewer prepared to let go of preconceived prejudices and absorb the magic of the timelessness of nature and its ever changing patterns.

Day To Night Oil on stretched cotton 76 x 61 cm

Evening Rain And Light Oil on stretched cotton 76 x 61 cm

The Dawn Magic Oil on stretched cotton 76 x 61 cm

Out Of Nowhere Ascending Oil on stretched cotton 76 x 61 cm

Treading Softly Oil on stretched cotton, 61 x 76 cm

The Mystery Out There Oil on canvas, 51 x 81 cm

There’s A Place Out There Where There Is No Right Or Wrong Oil on canvas 76 x 61 cm

Skellig, You Keep Me Seeing What’s Missing Oil on canvas 76 x 61 cm

Where Glory Begins And Ends Oil on canvas, 79 x 170 cm

Isn’t The World Full Of Magic “See” Oil on canvas 109 x 130 cm

Forever Awakening Oil on canvas 170 x 79 cm

Gemma Billington ‘An Dúchas (Homeland)’

2019 Gemma Billington Gemma was born in Killorglin, Co. Kerry and went to England in her early twenties. She studied Sculpture at Newbury College of Art, and gained a BA Honours degree at Winchester School of Art (Southampton University).

Gemma now lives and works between her studio in Ireland, Co. Kerry and Berkshire, England, where she helps to run the farm with her husband.

Her main inspiration comes from Nature and its ever changing patterns. She becomes particularly absorbed in the deathlessness and timelessness of Nature; this is intensified by her looking at the eternity of Nature through the flower, the ocean and the sky.

To the viewer there may appear to be a subject and there is, but there is also something else going on.

She chooses not to use traditional brush strokes, but uses other means of applying paint, almost like a dance with raw, vibrant colours and immediacy of illustrative mark-marking. The more one looks at the painting, the more one will be drawn into the paint, and to the meaning of the eternity.

Gemma Billington An Dúchas (Homeland) Ireland once home to eight million people, even today is a place of ghosts. Traces of those lives lost to famine and emigration can be seen still, especially in the West of Ireland. A stone wall, a gable end, lazy beds, potato drills, a wild rose bush, a flowering currant tree remind us that a family once lived here, that this now ruin was a place someone once called home.

In her poem ‘The Island. A Prospect’, Paula Meehan charts this country’s dark history as ‘bitter tales of landlords, emigration of plantation, rebellion, famine and ruin’ and Gemma Billington’s powerful new work, An Duchas, explores aspects of that complex, lonely past in images that evoke the concept of home within and against an Irish landscape.

An Duchas, meaning native place, also means a ‘a natural affinity, a kindred affection’ and here Billington conveys not only a deepening connection with her native place but a preoccupation with and love for the landscape she knows well. Her heart’s affections are felt in work of vibrant colours, in a strikingly new command of bold dramatic lines, in Billington’s assured structure and composition.

In those new paintings the house though an intrinsic part of the landscape does not dominate. We glimpse a roof, a gable wall against the abundant landscape. We imagine the lives lived, the world’s contained with those homes. In Sean Borodale’s memorable, atmospheric ‘Air House’ (a poem he subtitles ‘composite made during visits to an abandoned house in Mayo’) he writes of how With no usable door I had to climb in through a broken window There were unopened letters, a bottle of holy water the sacred heart disintegrating on its paper . . .

That yellow wooden chair is a ghost and in the left drawer of the blue sideboard in the kitchen that reel of crimson thread is a ghost.

Such imagined long-gone lives are also prompted by Billington’s new paintings. Her last exhibition captured the surging, storm-filled Atlantic. Here she has moved inland and brings back to life ghostly presences. Her focus is the domestic, as in domus, ‘home’, but it is the vibrant landscape too. Her palette contains dramatic reds, blues, greens; her perspective is such that the work draws one in. For the viewer it’s a deepening silent, nourishing experience.

Living in this landscape is celebrated and though time brings change and homes have fallen into ruin An Duchas invites us to remember the busyness of life, the dreams and hopes of people who once lived here.

In ‘The Only Story’ Julian Barnes asks is life beautiful but sad or sad but beautiful. It’s a question he borrowed from Frank O’Connor’s essay on Mozart. In this instance, in relation to Gemma Billington new show the answer is life is sad but beautiful. There’s no escaping sadness and, as these paintings testify, life contains its sorrows. Place for Billington contains the past, a past that has known inevitable disappointment and loss; the work convincingly acknowledges what is sad but ends on a beautiful note. For Gemma Billington, in the new body of work, the life is sad but beautiful.

She has found that sadness in the landscape she knows well, she knows those places where houses have been abandoned but she cherishes the lives once lived there and she celebrates the beauty of the natural landscapes, on-going vibrant abundant nature. But the enduring power of these paintings is in Billington’s outstanding skill in what are loving tributes to place, what place has meant and what place means to all the lives that ever lived and live there.

Niall Macmonagle, Art Critic

Curravagha (Farmyard) Oil on canvas board, 51 x 76 cm

Tooreenanaoscach (Green Field Of The Snipe) Oil on canvas board, 51 x 76 cm

Cosha (Near The River) Oil on canvas board, 51 x 76 cm

Maghastrasaun (Milking Place Of The Little Streams) Oil on canvas board, 51 x 76 cm

Coumnateorann (The Coomb Of The Boundary) Oil on canvas board, 51 x 76 cm

Corravoolia (Mountain Dairy) Oil on canvas board, 51 x 76 cm

Gortdarragh (Field Of The Oaks) Oil on canvas board, 46 x 61 cm

Lawher (Battlefield) Oil on canvas, 46 x 61 cm

Screathan na Greine (The Greyhound Series) Oil on canvas, 46 x 61 cm

Gortnaceann (Field Of The Heads Or Chiefs) Oil on canvas, 69 x 99 cm

Bunglasha, An Domhnach (Bunglasha, Sunday) Oil on canvas board, 51 x 76 cm

Bunglasha, An Luan (Bunglasha, Monday) Oil on canvas board, 51 x 76 cm

An Duchas, Satharan Oil on canvas board, 51 x 76 cm

An Duchas, Bunglasha Oil on canvas board, 51 x 76 cm

Lickeen Wood 1 Oil on canvas board, 13 x 18 cm

Lickeen Wood 2 Oil on canvas board, 13 x 18 cm

Lickeen Wood 3 Oil on canvas board, 13 x 18 cm

Lickeen Wood 4 Oil on canvas board, 13 x 18 cm

Gemma Billington

‘Beyond The Beyond’ ROGER ASLIN SPAR STREET

2016 Gemma’s paintings of dark and light eschew traditional painting techniques, with the artist using her bare hands to apply raw pigment to canvas. "When I am in my studio I am untethered by position or possibility" Gemma explains, her paint stained palms bearing witness to her colour saturated landscapes. A force of nature to be reckoned with, Gemma like the great masters before her, draws inspiration from the timelessness of nature and its ever-changing patterns. A raw intensity is conveyed through bold marks of textured colours and abstract imagery, which is both contemplative and meditative, a reflection perhaps of the artist's passion and dedication to the traditional practice of Kundalini yoga and gong.

Beyond The Beyond Oil on canvas 150 x 241 cm

Untethered By Position Or Possession II Oil on canvas 180 x 241 cm

I Asked "Where Have You Come From" She Said, "Straight From Eternity“ Oil on canvas 180 x 241 cm

Your Wings Will Take To Where Your Heart Wants To Be Oil on canvas 150 x 241 cm

If Your Messenger Is Slow, Go Meet Him Oil on canvas 150 x 241 cm

Where Clouds Are Hung For The Painters Eye Oil on canvas 71 x 94 cm

An Oak Is Often Split By A Wedge In Its Own Branches Oil on canvas 71 x 94 cm

Every Branch Blossoms According To The Root From Which It Sprung Oil on canvas 71 x 94 cm

Seeing Is Believing But Feeling Is Gods Own Truth Oil on canvas 71 x 94 cm

After The Gatherer Comes The Scatterer Oil on canvas 35,5 x 51 cm

Anthem Of Love And Light Heard In The Wind Oil on canvas 35,5 x 51 cm

No Need To Feel An Ill Wind If Your Haystack Is Tied Down Oil on canvas 35,5 x 51 cm

You Will Never Plough A Field By Turning It Over In Your Head Oil on canvas 35,5 x 51 cm

Silence Is The Fence Around The Haggard Where Wisdom Is Stacked Oil on canvas 71 x 94 cm

How Majestic. He Who Follows His Own Will Is A King Of Himself Oil on canvas 122 x 150 cm

Many A Sudden Change Takes Place On An Unlikely Day Oil on canvas 122 x 150 cm

If God Send You Out In The Storm May He Give You Strong Wings To Fly Oil on canvas 122 x 150 cm

The Man With The Strong Boot Does Not Mind Where He Places His Foot Oil on board 30 x 41 cm

Everyone Feels His Own Wound First Oil on board 25.5 x 30 cm

The Schoolhouse Bell Sounds Bitter In Youth And Sweet In Old Age Oil on board 28 x 35.5 cm

Earth Has No Sorrow That Heaven Cannot Heal Oil on board 30 x 41 cm

Honey Is Sweet But Don't Lick It Off The Briar Oil on board 25,5 x 30 cm

For Him, Nothing New Was Happening Oil on board 25,5 x 30 cm

The Light Revealing The Journey Oil on canvas 121 x 148 cm

Surging With Colours Rejoicing Oil on canvas 119 x 147 cm

Solo Exhibitions

Group Exhibitions

2019 Hay Hill Gallery, London

2015 London Irish Art Exhibition

2019 Cill Rialaig Arts Centre, Ireland

2013 Espacio Gallery, London

2017 Origin Gallery, Dublin

2012 Royal Academy of Arts

2016 Hay Hill Gallery, London

2011 Bankside Gallery London

2014 Listowel Writer’s Week, Ireland

2011 Lesley Hellier Space, New York

2014 Kilkenny Castle, Ireland

2011 Royal Academy of Arts

2014 Mount Juliet, Co. Kilkenny

2009 Osborne Studio Gallery, London

2013 Grace Belgravia, London

2008 Urban Retreat, Dublin

2013 Cill Rialaig Arts Centre, Ireland 2006 Cill Rialaig Arts Centre, Ireland 2012 27 Cork Street, London

1999 Corn Exchange, Newbury

2010 Urban Retreat, Dublin 2010 Muckross Park Hotel, Co. Kerry 2008 Listowel Writer’s Week, Ireland 2007 Urban Retreat, Dublin

Competitions

2007 Cill Rialaig Arts Centre, Ireland

2003/5 RA Summer Exhibition

2006 Pangfield Farm, Berkshire

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