One of my fondest visual memories as a child was traveling home one night in a car with family after visiting relatives. I watched the moon out the window as it seemed to follow us, flickering its silver light through the trees. Moments like that really fascinated me, and my love for stargazing and lunar activities has always stayed with me.
Biography
Derval Freeman is an Irish visual artist based in County Wicklow, working primarily in abstraction. Her painting practice is driven by colour and intuitive decision-making, examining how memory, lived experience, and landscape are internalised over time rather than represented directly. Through recurring structures and unresolved spatial relationships, her work explores tension, containment, and emotional pressure within abstract space.
Freeman’s work draws on long-term engagement with place and movement, producing paintings that sit between landscape and non-representation. Large colour fields are frequently interrupted or constrained, creating a sense of remembered terrain shaped by time, erosion, and psychological presence. Process remains visible, allowing imbalance and uncertainty to play an active role in the work.
She graduated from Limerick School of Art and Design in 1996 and works full-time as an artist. Her work has been exhibited widely in Ireland and internationally, including solo and group exhibitions at Hamilton Gallery, Sligo, Cairde Visual, Kilkenny Arts Festival, the dlr LexIcon Municipal Gallery, and touring exhibitions in China and the UK. She has undertaken artist residencies at Cill Rialaig, County Kerry, and her work is held in private collections in Ireland and abroad.
Exhibitions
Solo Exhibitions
2023 – Wanderings, Easter Snow Gallery, Seamus Ennis Arts Centre, Fingal, Co. Dublin
2021 – A Way to Equilibrium, Signal Arts Centre, Bray, Co. Wicklow
2018 – Solace II: Entering the Dream, Ranelagh Arts Centre, Dublin
2017 – Solace I, Signal Arts Centre, Bray, Co. Wicklow
2007 – Urban Trail, Frame Gallery, Limerick
Selected Group Exhibitions
2025 – Art Riddler Exhibition, Dublin
2025 – Climate Action for All (First Prize Winner), Climeaction, Cork
2025 – The Secret of Colour and Light, Walters, Dún Laoghaire (selected by Sahoko Blake)
2025 – Kilkenny Arts Festival, Kilkenny Art Gallery
2025 – Cairde Visual, Hyde Bridge Gallery, Sligo
2025 – 100/50, Unit 1 Gallery, London, UK
2025 – Paint Waterford, Mount Congreve Gardens, Waterford
2024 – Crosscurrents, dlr LexIcon Municipal Gallery, Dún Laoghaire
2024 – In Between, Walters, Dún Laoghaire (selected by Patricia Burns)
2024 – Europe in the Heart of Ireland, European Parliament Liaison Office, Dublin
2024 – Lines of the Land, An Chead Tine Gallery, Kilkenny
2024 – Interdependence, Walters, Dún Laoghaire (selected by Cian McLoughlan)
2024 – John Richardson French Residency Finalists Exhibition, Hambly & Hambly, Enniskillen
2023 – Conversation with Trees, Walters, Dún Laoghaire (selected by Eamon Colman)
2023 – Transience, Walters, Dún Laoghaire (selected by Carmel Benson)
2023 – Ancestral Houses and Meditations (touring), Hamilton Gallery Sligo / China
2022 – Hidden Histories, The Narrow Space Gallery, Clonmel
2022 – Bealtaine Festival (invited), Carrickahowley Gallery, USA
Awards
2025 – First Prize, Climate Action for All, Climeaction Art Competition, Cork
Residencies
2022 – The Cill Rialaig Project, Ballinskelligs, Co. Kerry
2007 – The Cill Rialaig Project, Ballinskelligs, Co. Kerry
Gallery Representation
The Kilkenny Gallery, 25 Patrick St. Co. Kilkenny
1608 Gallery, Bushmills, Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland
Reviews
Eamon Colman, review of Wanderings (2023)
Derval Freeman 