Barbara Rae arrived on the horizons of Dublin artlovers some years ago via Jorgensen Fine Arts, where her paintings made an immediate impact, and deservedly so.
She is not, however, merely a painter who also happens to work in graphic media; she was an accomplished graphic artist from early in her career, and she continues energetically to turn out, with aplomb, works in a whole range of media. How varied, and how strong that work is, can be testified by the present exhibition.
Though the Scots have a (generally undeserved) reputation for being temperamentally dour, their art is usually the reverse of that. Whether or not their centuries-old tendency to look to the continent is at the root of it, they love colour - often high, brilliant colour, too - and are uninhibited and free in using it. Barbara Rae, though a highly-disciplined artist, is right in the centre of the tradition.
In general, she paints landscape themes and often favours a strong horizon line, but her formats are free and inventive and her training in collage-like effects gives her an extra dimension.
One series of prints showing a small rowboat on a deserted seashore is haunting in itself, while her landscapes, with their glowing, intimate skies, cover a whole range of colour and mood.
When she brings in a kind of dense abstract calligraphy, which seems decorative rather than organic, I have moments of uneasiness; but this is vibrant, positive work by a master technician.
