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Upstream is a collective of three palettes from the Backwater Artists Group which will be exhibiting in the Mad Fish Restaurant and Cronin’s Pub, Crosshaven.

The three very different, yet complementary artists in the group showcase are Eileen Healy, Susanne Leutenegger and Angie Shanahan. The exhibition will be opened by Joachim Beug, lecturer in Art History and Katherine Boucher Beug, esteemed artist and art critic on Wednesday November 19th at 7pm. All are welcome to attend.

Eileen Healy from Youghal, East Cork is a graduate of Crawford College of Art and Design and won student of the year award from the Lavitt Gallery in 1988. After a residency at The Lavit she was a studio member at The Cork Artists Collective where she began running regular life drawing sessions for artists and so began her obsession with drawing from life. She since joined Backwater Studios where she has been a member for over 10 years. A strong believer in the practice of drawing, she believes it’s this practice of working from life that keeps her work fresh and alive. She uses models as her source of inspiration.

Exhibitions include Arnotts National Portrait Award Exhibition, RHA Annual show, UCC, CIT Wandesford Gallery,Crawford Gallery. Residencies include Cill Rialaig, Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Burren Art College and Students Arts League New York. Eileen also teaches life drawing Adult Education classes at CIT Crawford College of Art.

Susanne Leutenegger was born in Switzerland and graduated in Fine Art from the Crawford College of Art in Cork in 1987. Her studio has been located at the Backwater since 2004. She also teaches “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” and is a teacher of the Feldenkrais – Awareness through Movement Method and is a founder member of  Arthaven Gallery in Crosshaven. She has widely exhibited in Switzerland, Germany (2013 in Cologne) and in Dublin at the Royal Hibernian Academy and OPW and Cork (UCC, Glucksman, Crawford Gallery, Sirius Centre Cobh, Fenton Gallery, Form Gallery, Lavit Gallery). She describes her work as “invented organic shapes which are highly charged with energy yet quiet and resolved and uses strong and instinctive drawing and bold colour. “

Angie Shanahan graduated from the Crawford College of Art & Design in the 1980s. She is a member of the Backwater Artists Group and of the VAI. Since then, Angie has held numerous solo shows and has been selected for group exhibitions in Ireland and abroad. Most recent shows include Case 13, Lavitt Quay Gallery, Noli Mi Tangere, Wandesford Quay Gallery. Place Space, Wandesford Quay Gallery; Hard Times at Cill Rialaig Project Gallery, Kerry and Urban Retreat Gallery, Dublin; the RHA Annual Exhibition 2011 and  Ciall 2011 where she received an award for painting. Her work is featured in a recent Gallery Press publication, Huts and Sheds by Derek Mahon; Representing Art in Ireland, Fenton Gallery publication, and. Art in State Buildings, 1995-2005. OPW cat. Angie also won a commission from the Office of Public Works to paint a portrait of Michael Collins for the Gallery of Taosaigh. This now hangs in Dail Eireann.

“One of my first instincts is to distil the sense and soul of the places that capture my attention, the relationship between the physical reality we see and the invisible conceptual reality harboured in the spirit of the place. The landscapes often contain man made  structures, forgotten, some in semi-dereliction subsumed back into nature temporarily”.

All three are part of the Backwater Artists Group which is located in Wandesford Quay, together with the Cork Printmakers and the Wandesford Quay Gallery. Founded in 1990 to provide studio space for visual artists in Cork city there are 28 studio spaces for varied disciplines such as painting, mixed media and sculpture.