Maria Simonds-Gooding

For some time Maria Simonds-Gooding has been inching into a kind of personal Minimalism, though one with definite landscape overtones…

For some time Maria Simonds-Gooding has been inching into a kind of personal Minimalism, though one with definite landscape overtones and implications rather than the coolly formalist kind. At first this seemed to be not only at odds with her previous style, but rather a tangent to her whole development. However, she has persevered on her route, and by working her way steadily through what looked like an increasingly narrow passage, has come out into daylight at the end.

Her new exhibition is easily her most convincing in at least a decade, though it is limited to a handful of pictures plus a few etchings. The paintings are notably sparse, tonally limited (there is an awful lot of grey or variants of it) and have a rather distant, meditative character. Plaster or gesso is used, giving a rather dry, dusty texture. Since the artist lives in Kerry, on the Dingle peninsula, it is easy enough to relate these basic, almost amoebic images to the local landscape and to old forts and stone circles.

Such subject matter can easily become a cliche, a modernised form of the old-style Picturesque, and it can also lead to abstract pattern-making of a predictable type. A few small, widely spaced, lumpy shapes, a squiggle of curving, abstract calligraphy, and a lot of greyish space could so easily be a recipe for boredom. But Maria Simonds-Gooding has developed an accurate, refined sense of placing - essential in this field, a subtler tonal sense, and an increasing ability to make her "empty" areas work spatially. The few etchings, while atmospheric and cleanly styled, are rather more conventional than the paintings.

Runs until January 31st.