Noírín Mooney

Noírín Mooney, nee Williams, was born in Co. Galway but has spent most of her growing and working life in Co. Clare.

Having graduated from Galway University, she went on to take her ATC degree under McEvoy and Mannering at the College of Art in Limerick. She taught in Scoil Carmel before becoming a Professor of Art in Mary Immaculate Training College in Limerick. During these years she held two joint exhibitions with Eileen Egan and participated individually in several Irish Winter Artists' Exhibitions.

In 1969 she married the poet, Brian Mooney, and together they moved to the Burren in Co. Clare where they now own and run the Vincent Perfumery. Here the brilliant floral colour of the Burren, combined with the uniquitous rock-grikes, prompted her to try and capture something of the magic of the place in batik, a medium which had always fascinated her.

Her work came to the attention of Prof. Bob O'Driscoll, who invited her to participate in what has since become his legendary Celtic Consciousness Symposium in the University of Toronto in 1979. She spent over two years preparing fourteen massive batiks on the theme of the Irish Epic, the Tain, for this Symposium. They were to dominate the event and now hang permanently in Canada.

Commissions followed. Of her Stations of the Cross, commissioned by St. Jarlath's College in 1984, Cyril Barrett, the renowned art critic wrote: "These Stations are among the most original I have ever seen. They depict the suffering of Christ and the dignity of the God - man without sentimentality, without rhetoric - and the medium and the style are a perfect vehicle for both the idea and the image". Noírín Mooney is obsessed with the problem of medium. Over the years she has again and again tried to translate the elusiveness of the Burren into her favourite medium, paint. Ironically, it was a protracted sojourn in the South of France in 1986 which helped her make her colour break through.

She has exhibited extensively in the United States - Louisville, Kentucky; Atlanta, Georgia; San Francisco and Los Angeles; Santa Fe; Mexico, have all hosted exhibitions - and her work hangs in several galleries there.