BIO

Originally from Donegal, Irish artist Maria Noonan McDermott now lives and works from her studio in Co.Letirim. Heavily influenced by the impressionist movement, her work focuses on the study of light and form in Irish landscapes. With a love of folklore and story-telling, Noonan McDermott's influences lie in rural Ireland, it is in these magical places that share a colloquial history where stories and the people are often ingrained into the landscape.

'Painting with palette knife, Noonan-McDermott maintains her own elegant yet brash style. Heavy, textured marks of paint sit on the canvas amongst soft contours of light. Her recognizable juxtaposition of styles combine to reveal an impressionist and abstract trait in her work' – http://italish.eu/news/maria-noonan-mcdermott/

I began my artistic career in Dublin in 1985 and qualified in Fashion and Design. From there I returned to college and completed a certificate in visual education before continuing on to study Fine Art in the University Of Ulster. In the year 1990 I had my first solo exhibition in Letterkenny, Co. Donegal. The feedback I received gave me the encouragement to follow my dreams.

2015 marked a very special year as I celebrated 25 years of exhibiting. I have been involved in many art and community projects and feel fortunate to have had my paintings selected for numerous juried group exhibitions. Over the past twenty five years my work has featured in 27 solo exhibitions.

In 2017 I launched my first book incorporating my paintings with a collection of original poetry entitled 'Beyond the horizon'. I followed this up with my book called 'Visual Antholgy' and my current new poetry book, 2019, entitled 'Yesteryear'.

My work is represented by galleries throughout Ireland. It is also held in private and corporate collections in Ireland, England, across Europe and America.
Review
'In Noonan-McDermott's work, there is a familiarity to the scenes and at the same time a sense of unfamiliarity. It is reminisent of Yeat's later paintings, which often seem about to dissolve. This sense of imminent disappearance is created by a multi-layered, fractured surface created by painting with a palette knife which also echoes Yeats.
Noonan-McDermott's paintings are created over long periods. The accumulation of tiny flecks of different colours are like sedimentary rocks, counterpointed by smooth areas of paint, which look as though they have been polished. A sense of the strangeness in the everyday runs through all the paintings… There is a friction between what can be remembered topographically and emotionally.'

The Visual Artists' News Sheet CRITIQUE SUPPLEMENT, May-June 2015 Review By Andy Parsons(Co-founder of Floating World Artists' Books)