Catriona Dooley

I am a mixed-media artist working in paint, embroidery and ceramics. I completed my BA in Fine Art (Kent Institute of Art, 1997) and MA in Fine Art/Textiles (Goldsmiths, 1999). My work explores our shared experience of being human, drawing on fairytale and myth to explore psychological struggle and awakening. The art of young children, which expresses unfixed and non-standard experience, is a particular source of inspiration. My work inhabits spaces between order and chaos, its surfaces combining detail with vigorous, energetic mark-making. Folk references collide with images from contemporary media (TV, magazines, internet), forming fragmented, precarious worlds. I work by layering images upon surfaces that are part-drawn, part-embroidered; and by exploring the relationship between text and image.

I was commissioned in 2004 by the Office of Public Works, Ireland, to create six drawings for the National Library in Dublin to celebrate the opening of new wing as part of the Bloomsday Centenary. I have exhibited as follows: Spears of Daylight (St Patrick’s University Hospital, 2011); Summer Show (Temple Bar Galleries, 2006); Pin (Mermaid Arts Centre, Dublin, 2005; published in Circa Magazine); Permaculture (Temple Bar Galleries, 2005); Christmas Show (Cross Gallery, 2004); Infanta Margarita and Friends (Solo exhibition, One Production Studios, 2004); Nights at the Circus (Habitat, 2004).