Bridget O'Hare
This installation focuses on collective and prolonged silence, as experienced in a Quaker meeting room. It is an invitation to experience this silence as a created space where stillness becomes a form of connection and reflection.
The work is painted in oil on birch plywood panels and references the general aesthetic that is common to all Quaker meeting rooms: simplicity, muted and neutral colours, regular proportions, purity of line, symmetry and rhythm around a central space, and the interplay of light and shadow.
There is a merging of physical space and internal landscape - a place where community and solitude can co-exist.
Ekphrastic writing is a practice with a long history. It describes creative or imaginative writing that has been written as a personal response to a work of art. In this thesis, the discussion is confined to ekphrastic writing in response to paintings and focuses on the practice taking place in a workshop and gallery setting.
The thesis considers what it means to appreciate a painting and identifies and describes the key components of an ekphrastic writing practice: namely, slow looking, note taking and fictioning or imaginative writing. It evaluates how this practice can inform and enhance a viewer’s appreciation of an artwork, concluding, firstly, that such workshops fare well when compared against recognized criteria devised to clarify what is meant by an aesthetic experience and the idea of fruition in a gallery visit, and secondly, that such workshops offer a unique and personal way of engaging with art that is enjoyable and rewarding in many ways.
A case study, in the form of an ekphrastic writing workshop, was held in the Royal Hibernian Academy, Dublin. An account of this workshop is included, as well as the detailed workbook given to each participant, a collection of the writings that were produced, and an outline of the findings from a questionnaire submitted to the participants at the end of the workshop.
Bridget is a visual artist based in Dublin. She makes paintings, drawings and mixed media pieces that look at interior spaces. She examines the tension between the fixed nature of the planes and surfaces that form the space and the fugitive nature of the life played out within that space.
In 2023, she completed a study exchange at ENSAV La Cambre, Brussels.
She has exhibited in **How We See**, Diva (2023); **Connect**, Artnet Dun Laoghaire (2023); **Fractal**, Powerscourt Townhouse (2024); **Duende**, Artnet Dun Laoghaire (2024); **Open Exhibition**, Signal Arts (2024); and **Mud Between the Toes**, Pallas Projects (2025).
