Barrie Cooke: Portraits

Butler Gallery, The Castle, Kilkenny Daily 10am-1pm, 2-5pm Until Apr 26 056-7761106Throughout the years, individual portraits have appeared in Barrie Cooke's solo shows. They've usually been arresting.

Cooke, renowned for his landscape paintings, is the kind of artist who sets out to provide a vivid account of the lived encounter with the subject, and his paintings are imbued with that alert vitality. In his portraits, always painted from life, there is an intense concentration on the sitter as a living presence. While he has consistently made portraits, he has done so only at the rate of one or two a year, which is why they featured as single pieces.

‘The idea of gathering them together for a show has long been mooted, though, and now the Butler Gallery has done it. Cooke’s sitters are often friends and people he admires. They include poets and writers Leland Bardwell, Seamus Heaney, John Montague, John McGahern (above), Ted Hughes, Núala Ní Dhómhnaill and Dermot Healy. Artists Nick Miller, Dorothy Cross and Camille Souter also appear. Essential viewing.

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