Artist Mary Harrison will have her first ever solo exhibition later this month. To the Waters and the Wild opens in the Courthouse Gallery, Kinvara, Friday, June 28.

The opening will be hosted by chairperson of the Kinvara Area Visual Arts group, Kava, Joe McCaul. Joe, who is Mary’s husband, is also a painter and sculptor.

Mary created this body of work over the past year and it shows the development of her creative journey, from landscape and nature influences to abstracts from within.

Currently living in Ballinderreen with Joe, Mary hails from Bunduff, near Mullaghmore, County Sligo, and grew up between a lake and the sea. To the Waters and the Wild  is a line from one of her favourite poems, The Stolen Child, by WB Yeats. The title and subject of the exhibition reflect the strong influences of Mary’s childhood home.

Some paintings depict water, oystercatchers and the wildness of winter seas. In others, abstract shapes appear with hints of forms, that disappear into swirls of playful lines and blocks of colour.

Mary uses acrylics, pastels and ink on board and paper to create excitement, moody moments and mystery, and she hopes visitors to the exhibition will get as much pleasure from viewing the paintings, as she had in creating them.

Among the influences on Mary’s painting life was her late friend and abstract painter, Debbie Brown, who sadly died this year.

And she is grateful to her husband Joe McCaul, who created The Potato People series of famine sculptures, for his constant support and encouragement.

“He has put his own paintbrush aside while he is building my studio,” she says, “It is a creative house where a wet canvas can sit on the table for discussion during dinner.”

Mary is interested in creativity being accessible to everyone, and runs workshops on Intuitive Painting, which she studies in New Mexico. She has also run a popular novice workshop in Kinvara called Scribble Out Stress. There is more information on those workshops on her website “ThePaintingsWithinYou.com.

Meanwhile, Mary’s latest paintings can be seen at the KAVA Courthouse, Kinvara in To the Waters and the Wild from June 28 to July 7, daily from 11-5pm, and all are welcome.

Pictured: Breaking (above) and Internal, two of the paintings from Mary Harrison’s show in Kinvara.