Cloé Cloherty

Bright flashes of light and colour compete with dark foreboding skylines to animate and empower Cloé's bewitching landscape paintings. A rich palette of overlaid colour ensures that Cloé conveys the very earthiness of the region she depicts. Broad sweeping brushstrokes coupled with a bold handling of the palette knife invest her images with a remarkable sense of drama and movement. She presents us with vast open landscapes, wide panoramas which appear sublimely wild and remote.

The forty paintings which constitute this 2003 exhibition are the result of Cloé's enduring passion for the West Coast of Ireland. She has travelled extensively throughout the region and identifies with its captivating mood and beauty. Her most recent visits have been to Connemara, and an inspiring tour on horse-back which allowed her to completely immerse into the undisturbed and ancient landscape. Cloé describes her images as 'darkly romantic' and is at pains to stress her fascination with the spirit of the area, the sense of the history of the land, and the energy and vitality which she feels deeply embedded within it.

Donegal, Galway, Killarney, Kerry... just a few of the areas along the Atlantic Coast which have inspired Cloé. She makes quick oil sketches in situ and these then become a starting point for her larger finished canvases. Her aim is to capture the immediacy of the landscape, the rich colours which bathe the horizon at sunset, the heavy ominous storm-cloud or turbulent and windswept coastline... all of which can alter at a minute's notice.

Cloé studied Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, London before starting her artistic career painting Old Masters on film sets in Israel. She travelled, before continuing her career working at studios including Pinewood, Shepperton and Elstree. After a further three years, Cloé began painting for herself full-time and set up her studio in Battersea, where she is now firmly and very successfully established. Her work is highly sought after, be it landscapes, figurative studies or private commissions.

It is a great pleasure for The Osborne Studio Gallery to host Cloé's third one-man exhibition - it is an outstanding collection of inspiring, contemporary landscape paintings.