Marie Carroll ( - 2016)

  Drinks at the Shelbourne Bar, Dublin

Dublin City's manifold enticements have captivated Marie Carroll and provided the inspiration and subject matter for her delightful paintings for more than forty years.

Her techniques and themes reflect her interest in the painterly concerns of French Impressionism, which she modernizes through her use of strong harmonious colours, illustrating the success in which the artist assimilates aspects of Impressionism while staying true to her own idiosyncrasies.

She received her formal training at the Goldsmith College of Art, where she spent three years learning and developing her masterly control of light and colour. Marie moved to Ireland in the 1970's, where she fell in love with the vibrant, bustling streets and the historic parks of Dublin.

Compiled of a harmonious range of hues, she creates compositions in which she mixes herself with the crowd on one of Dublin's most bustling thoroughfares, Grafton Street, and plays the role of an onlooker at a wedding outside Dublin's monumental Shelbourne Hotel. The insouciant crowds and busy, scurrying waitresses inside favourite Dublin meeting places - Bewleys and the Shelbourne - are brought to throbbing life as they are captured in a riot of harmonious colours, applied with a seemingly spontaneous yet masterly hand. She sees Dublin as a feminine city and Dublin is indeed the heroine of her paintings.

In contrast to these urban scenes of well-known Dublin landmarks, rural scenes, including country cottages from the West of Ireland and seascapes along the Irish coastline, have also dominated her oeuvre. For these paintings, Marie tends to abandon the striking palette her Dublin scenes are famously known for, in favour of a much softer palette  comprising of earthy tones; ochers and browns, perhaps in reflection of the outdoor subject matter. Her work which is greatly inspired by the Irish coastline and its tradition of sailing and beach activities is dominated by swirling and sweeping brushstrokes. Her sailing scenes, which capture the dynamic movement of the sea, are painted en plein air, thus capturing the spontaneity of the moment, again reflecting the ideals of French Impressionism so prominent in her work.

She is an instinctive preservationist. "I don't like to see my city vanishing before my eyes" she has said; a hearty Amen to that. But above all, she is a painter of happiness and of joie de vivre.

iMarie Carroll died in 2016.