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Veronica Bolay
, German-Irish, 1941-2020
Title
Bog TaleDatec.2005
MediumOil on canvas
Dimensions
76 × 101 cm
Signedon verso, lower right: V. Bolay
Credit LinePresented, Aengus Jankowsky, 2024
Object numberNGI.2024.74
DescriptionBolay’s art was steeped in the wild, wet landscape of Mayo. She would wander winding boreens, making notes and tiny sketches and filling her memory with images that would eventually be developed into her distinctive paintings and pastel drawings. “My life in a western county offers constantly fleeting moments of light and shadow”, she wrote, “I am drawn towards the barely perceptible, the ephemera and unsubstantial components… ” Her evocative and atmospheric style, which captured the magic of everyday scenes and textures, often in radiant light is exemplified in many of her paintings, such as Bog Tale (Erris), representing an area very special to the artist – Erris, Co. Mayo. Bolay and her husband were completely enamoured with the west of Ireland and for Bolay, her appeal to the rural west was largely due to the fact that she could feel the human imprint– the hands that worked the land over generations – on the landscape, which she believed was absent in areas overserved by industrial agriculture. Her ethereal style is simultaneously abstract and realistic; one can sense both stillness and movement in this work.ProvenanceThe artist; by descent to previous owner; Presented, Aengus Jankowsky, 2024Exhibition HistoryElemental: An Appreciation of the Extraordinary Life and Work of Veronica Bolay, Coach House Gallery, Dublin, October 2022 - March 2023