 Kevin
McNamara was born in Manchester of Irish parents but was
brought up in Ireland. He studied art at the National College of
Art and Design in Dublin, where he took his degree in 1985. A year
before leaving college he had his first exhibition when he was
included in the ‘Emerging Artists Show” organized by Guinness Peat
Aviation, and that same year same year he took part in the influential
‘ Young Artists’ exhibition in Dublin.
Since then he has shown regularly in group exhibitions in Ireland,
England, and the United States. He has also worked on a number
of portrait commissions and in 1992 painted a mural for the Irish
Pavillion at the Seville Exposition.
Artists who have influenced him are Velasquez and
the nineteenth century Russian painters Ilya Repin and Valentine
Serov.
Besides easel painting, McNamara has spent time in
the United States working as an artist in film production. Kevin
McNamara’s subject matter is mainly landscape and figurative. He
is fascinated by the way in which light affects the atmosphere
and mood of a scene and hence our relationship to it. In his paintings
there is intense realism. Despite an impressionistic approach,
the colors, seen at a particular moment in time, becomes the primary
focus of his endeavour. This, combined with a consciousness of
spatial relationships and tonal values, creates a quality of light
and mood in the scenes that concentrate our attention on those
things that so excite him.
Typical of McNamara’s method of working, the paint in these pictures
is applied ‘fat over lean’, whereby the artist increases the amount
of oil or medium as the painting progreses in order to produce
a surface that is rich in textural terms.
McNamara normally works out of doors reacting directly and spontaneously
to his subject. His view and treatment of a scene are therefore
in the broad tradition of plein air painting. He seeks precise
color temperatures, tonal values and harmonies of relationship.
The mood of his paintings is usually one of tranquility rendered
through close observation, although occasionally he becomes more
preoccupied with a more emotional response. McNamara, despite working
in a tradition with long precedents in Ireland, brings a freshly
personal view to his treatment of his subject.
Just as nature constantly refreshes itself, artists like him find
new ways of drawing our attention to the wonders around us.
—S. B. Kennedy - Curator, Ulster Museum
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