Munster Express
Friday, 7th July, 2006
Liam Murphy

It was a glorious day with the tide far out to visit the Joan Clancy Gallery in the Rinn Gaeltacht. Oyster Catchers were out in a tractor unit on the seabed.

Inside in the attractive gallery there is a feast for the eye and the spirit with nearly sixty pieces on offer. Arthur Maderson has two treasures: DISTANT SUNLIGHT and LIKE SHIPS IN THE NIGHT. Michael Mulcahy has three wild expressive pieces that throb with anger, power and aggression, gathering into an explosive focal point, from his DREAM SEA Series.

Andrea Jameson has a beautiful study KILFARRISSEY COVE but it is the developing work of the young Clancy sisters that overwhelms the senses. Blawnin Clancy has a series of studies and impressions of fish underwater that sing to the light and the under the surface sense of things. Her FREEFALL is an experimental gem of water-like beading or clusters of grapes or DNA images.

As you go in the door the repeating figurative images of a young girl in a landscape are like stills from a movie that mirrors itself or advances some frames too quickly so that you get three images. This is Rayleen Clancy at her imaginative and visual best. One piece NOTHING IS EVER THE SAME sets the theme for this clever confident work. Two other upstairs studies STORM APPROACHING and STORM BREAKING are excellent.

As I drove away from this gallery on the edge of the seascape and as a strong shadow raced across the oyster beds the sense of an Irish title to one of Rayleen Clancy's pieces struck home, Ní Bhionn in Aon Rud Ach Seal (Nothing is Ever the Same).