The fourth solo exhibition of work by Una Sealy opened this week at the Ashford Gallery in the Royal Hibernian Academy in Ely Place. Sealy is the great granddaughter of Douglas Hyde, whose wife, Lucy Cometina Kurtz and daughter Una Hyde were both "keen amateur painters. That would have influenced me." The artist, who wore a mauve silk ensemble to her opening on Thursday evening, declared that her work "celebrates the ordinary". It's "the art of the ordinary, the unheroic," she said. The 27 paintings featuring scenes from San Francisco, Lisbon, Dublin (the northside, she adds) and Aquas de Busot in the mountains of Valencia in Spain are of "people in rural and urban landscapes and still life - everything".
Her husband, Chris Leonard, was there to enjoy the opening, along with Sealy's brother Owen Sealy and her TV producer friend Sarah Share from Tipperary town. What would the administrator of the gallery, Deirdre Carr (in raspberry) choose as her favourite? After some deliberation, she chooses Path Round the Flax, Catalunya. The show runs until Thursday, 27th July.