Derval Freeman graduated from Limerick School of Art and Design in 1996 with a diploma in fine art painting. She has exhibited in several solo and group shows throughout her career and her work is in many private collections. Some of the highlights of Derval’s career was taking up an artist residency in Cill Rialaig Co. Kerry in 2007 and also was an invited artist by the Hamilton Gallery Sligo to participate in two of their invited artist’s group exhibitions. ‘Eva Gore Booth’ and ‘Among School Children’.
Derval grew up outside Nenagh town in County Tipperary and later her family moved to County Clare. She is now settled in Co. Wicklow for the past number of years where she paints full time. She goes out walking regularly and love’s to be surrounded by nature and the open landscape. Her painting style leans towards abstract expressionism and there is an element of the figurative in the work too.
Her inspirations come from her life experiences past and present and from nature and the wonders of the universe. Her painting process almost always start’s with the drawing where she mixes loose pencil or charcoal under-drawings with layers in oils and cold wax. She is interested in how the loose under-drawings dictate the paint through shape and mark-making. She has an interest in colour too, how one colour works off the other and how monotones of lights and dark’s influence it. Her paint application is a mix of thickened candy-like impasto’s of oils mixed in cold wax, in contrast with colour transparencies that sweep across the canvas often pulling the composition into place.
See an in debth interview with the artist here
Exhibitions
Current & Upcoming
Solo- ‘A Way to Equilibrium’, Signal Arts, Bray Co. Wicklow August 16th 2021
Group- Three Walls, Hyde Bridge Gallery, Yeats Building, Hyde Bridge, Sligo, F91 DVY4, February 26th 2022
Solo- Easter Snow Gallery (Seamus Ennis, TSEAC), Naul, Fingal, Co. Dublin, K32 AY27, Oct/Nov 2022
Solo Shows
Imagine – Hambly & Hambly, Dunbar House, Enniskillen, UK, 2021
Solace II– Entering the Dream– Ranalagh Arts Centre, Dublin, 2018
Solace I – Signal Arts Centre, Bray, Co. Wicklow, 2017
Mixed Series 2007/2009 – Frame Gallery, Limerick, 2009
Urban Trail – Frame Gallery, Upper Denmark St. Limerick, 2007
Plane Series – Windmill Lane Studios, Dublin 1998
Group Shows
Enlighten 2021 June– Hambly & Hambly, Dunbar House, Enniskillen, UK, 2021
Meditations of Time in Civil War June– Invited Artists, Hamilton Gallery, 4 Castle Street, Sligo, 2021
Imagine Beyond 2021 Annual– Hambly & Hambly, Dunbar House, Enniskillen, UK, 2021
21st Annual, SAS Members Exhibition- Signal Arts Center, Bray, Wicklow, (Online), 2021
Weapon of Choice– Slow Lane Gallery (AKA Inspire Gallery), Dublin (Online), 2020
Solo Ensemble- Hambly & Hambly, Dunbar House, Enniskillen, UK, (Online), 2020
Westival 2020– Westival Virtual Gallery (Moved online due to COVID 19), Westport, Mayo, 2020
Among School Children– Invited Artists, Hamilton Gallery, 4 Castle Street, Sligo (Online), 2020
Imagine Together: Artists Unlocked – Group Show at Hambly & Hambly, Dunbar House, Enniskillen, 2020
20th Annual SAS, Members Exhibition– Signal Arts Center, Bray, Wicklow, (Moved online due to COVID 19), 2020
Eva Gore Booth – Hamilton Gallery Sligo, externally exhibited at the Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI), UCD, Dublin, 2020
Incognito – Sol Gallery, Dublin, 2020
Incognito – Lavit gallery, Cork. 2019
Ranelagh Arts Members Exhibition – The Gallery, Frame Experts, Dublin, 2019
Incognito, Solomon Fine Art Gallery, Dublin, 2019
Wicklow Artists: A Gathering – In aid of Wicklow Children of Yemen, Pop-up Gallery La Touche Place, Wicklow, 2019
Wicklow Artists: A Gathering – In aid of Wicklow dementia, Pop-up Gallery La Touche Place, Wicklow, 2018
16th Annual SAS Members Exhibition – Signal Arts Centre, Wicklow, 2015
Signal Open – Signal Arts Centre, Wicklow, 2015
Christmas Show – Gallery 75, Limerick 2008
Celebrating Motherhood – Gallery 75, Limerick – 2007
Christmas Show – Gallery 75, Limerick, 2007
Eclectic – Tipperary Institute, Tipperary, 2007
The Millar Gallery (Formerly), Sixmilebridge, 2007
Light Captured – Gallery 75, Limerick, 1997
Public Space 1 – Ulster Bank, O’Connell Avenue, Limerick, 1997
Public Space 2 – Bank of Ireland, O’Connell Avenue, Limerick, 1997
