About Pauline Keaney

Individual, colourful, sensitive, humorous, sensual, spontaneous and adventurous. Pauline's art is an extension of her personality and the same description applies to both. Throughout her career as a printmaker and painter Pauline has responded to her environment and, since moving permanently to Hydra nine years ago, she has naturally turned to her surroundings for source material and inspiration.

She has, I think, been teetering on the brink of pure abstraction for some time, but unable to resist the temptation of that horizontal line. There is a seduction in the familiar, a safety, and it would have been easier for her to carry on ploughing that same furrow, it worked after all, and those paintings, dynamic and evocative, brought memories of Greece to many a dark Northern wall. But that isn't Pauline, she likes to take risks. I ask about the process.

"I start by laying down colour, I throw it on actually, mixing the paint from pure pigments myself, then moving the canvas round on the floor, not using a brush. Then at a certain point, I'll decide it's ready to go on the wall and start working with brushes or even my fingers, taking off colour with rags, very much in the way I've always worked. But the difference is that I'm just intuitively following the marks and colours, there's no idea of consciously relating it to something else. The other big change is that, whereas before I was using just three colours, now I'm working with 6 or 7".

Earlier she'd shown me the painting that had set her off down this path. It was a large square canvas evoking a cloudy sunset. But there was something new, a strand of bright red.

"I threw it on, it could have been sheer desperation - here I am doing another greyish landscape." But it was that red Cadmium Vermillion pigment, and the way she's applied it that opened the door to these new, exciting paintings, works that are not representations of the material world in a literal sense, but are very definitely of this place and this time".
Tessa Green

EXHIBITIONS
2013 Melina Mecouri Gallery, Hydra, Greece - The Sun is King
2011 Melina Mecouri Gallery, Hydra, Greece - Change in the Weather
2010 Melina Mecouri Gallery, Hydra, Greece - Elements
2007 Cornerstone Gallery, Liverpool
2006 Historical Archives Museum of Hydra, Greece - This show was the flagship art happening of the 2006 annual Miaouleia celebrations on Hydra. An enormous honour for any artist, let alone a non-Hydra native.
2003 Lagoudera Yacht Club, Hydra, Greece
2002 The Boston Museum of Fine Art School, Boston, Mass. USA
2001 Melina Mecouri Gallery, Hydra, Greece
1999 Hanover Gallery, Liverpool, England (one woman show)
1998 Melina Mercouri Gallery, Hydra, Greece
1997 Oddfellow's Gallery, Kendal, Cumbria, England (one woman show)
1996 Dale End Galleries, Long Sleddale, Cumbria, England (one woman show)
1995 Miranda Gallery, Hydra, Greece (one woman show)
1990 Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy, London, England
1988 Lakes' Artists, Grasmere, Cumbria, England
1986 Summer Exhibition, Royal Academy, London, England
1983-84 'Germination 3', Trilateral Exhibition shown in London, Paris, Edinburgh and Kassel
1983 Stowell's Trophy Exhibition, Royal Academy, London, England
1982 Slade Folio Exhibition, Minsky's Gallery, London, England
1982 Print Workshop Exhibition, Reading University, Reading, Berkshire, England
1981 Degree Show, Reading University, Reading, Berkshire, England
1981 Stowell's Trophy Exhibition, Royal Academy, London, England
1979 Young Contemporaries Exhibition, ICA, London, England

EDUCATION
1981-83 Slade School of Fine Art, University College London, Post Graduate Degree in Printmaking
1977-81 Reading University, Reading, Berkshire, England, BA Hons, Fine Art
1976-77 Berkshire College of Art, Reading, Berkshire, England, Art Foundation Course

TEACHING POSTS
2001-02 The Boston Museum of Fine Art School, Boston, Massachusetts. USA, Artist in Residence
1990-93 Casterton School, Kirby Lonsdale, Cumbria, England, Head of Department of Printmaking
1983-86 Eton College, Eton, Berkshire, England, Teacher of Print making and Painting

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