The 360° of the Reek

Breda Burns is of Westport, with an imbued love of the place and people. Her dedication to the community has been marked by continued involvement with community and public art. She was a founding member of Westport Artist Studios group, and was active in the development of the Custom House Studios. 

Breda has lived in the shade of Croagh Patrick for most of her life, absorbing the changing moods of the mountain and its environs. This series of work began over two years ago, but has been germinating since she first drew the mountain as a child. The Reek has been silently waiting for her to return as it waits for all pilgrims - patient, accepting.  

Breda’s painting has always been intensely personal; a dynamic celebration of the body and the spaces it inhabits. She works through evolving layers inhabited by the human form, flowing words and the surrounding landscape. The starting point in Breda’s work is rigorous research and detailed working plans. As the works evolve through layers of thought and emotion rendered in textured and detailed colour work, these barely visible strata infuse her paintings with a tangible potency. 

360° is the culmination of a process of self-discovery, a topographical exploration of two landscapes - that of the mountain and of her body - in 360 paintings. With this exhibition Breda embraces both herself and her space here in the West, a cartographical rendering through colour of merging and contrasting physicality. These detailed renderings of the physical presences of human form and landscape observe and question, and finally maturate into expressions of acceptance.

Orla O’Toole