Hannah Casey-Brogan’s recent work speaks of journeys taken and journeys imagined. These are paintings like post cards and drawings the size of aeroplane windows. They would fit neatly in a suitcase or a through a letter box. This scale is not accidental. During a residency in Japan in 2015, Casey-Brogan set herself the task of making work that she could pack up and bring home. However, of the 21 works in this solo exhibition the Shortest Path, all were made in Belfast between her studio and her kitchen table.

Casey-Brogan cites Dr Seuss’s Oh, the Places You’ll Go as a source of inspiration and some of the pivotal moments in her practice have occurred during time spent abroad. Yet, for the last two years, the period during which this body of work was made and her first child was born, her daily movements have been back and forth between the city centre and home; between work and the domestic; between the roles of artist and mother.

The title, the Shortest Path, suggests the route taken by flowing water or electricity – the path of least resistance – or a short cut in the process of navigating between two identities. Like a river meandering through a landscape, the journey erodes and shapes the terrain and transforms the traveller.

Despite the often abstracted nature of her imagery, Casey-Brogan considers herself a landscape artist and looks back to the Romantic period when painters including John Martin (1789-1854) and JMW Turner (1775-1851), evoked the awesomeness of nature in melodramatic images of volcanos and storms, often with religious themes. In her diminutive works, Casey-Brogan is attempting to convey something of the epic impressions conveyed by those past masters. She admires the tension created in the viewer between fascination and fear and the artists’ desire to achieve the sublime – the quality of greatness beyond all calculation.

In the history of Western art and architecture, greater scale has often been associated with increased power, importance and impact. We celebrate the largest buildings, the highest spires and biggest paintings. In contrast, in the East, particularly in China, Japan and Persia, miniature paintings and sculptures, such as Netsuke, have been celebrated for their intricacy and the skill and focus required to create them. Compared to the West, where great scale was a public declaration of the importance, wealth and fame of the man who paid for it, in Asia and the Middle East, miniatures were more likely to be a personal and private art form, kept in an album or cabinet and displayed in a domestic setting for the consumption of the household. While most art collectors in both spheres were men, the domestic setting of the miniature allowed more scope for female consumption.

Although scale is important to Casey-Brogan, colour is her main concern. When she paints in her studio she constructs layers of colour, building them one on top of another, and then scrapes and sands them down before applying more. At home, while caring for her small daughter, she draws often in the pure colour of felt tip pens. The intensity of these drawings suggest the heightened senses of a new mother, constantly vigilant and tuned into every movement her child makes. Often drawing with one hand while feeding the baby, her subject became the verdant garden outside the window. The joyful colour of these drawings was, in some respects, an escape from the isolation and mundanity of looking after a small baby day in and day out. Casey-Brogan has reflected on the impact of motherhood on her art practice and writes,

The drawings I made at home, when my baby was very little, look to me like a display of constant interruptions but they were made during the happiest if not most challenging time in my life. [i]

These drawings, made in snatched moments, have a frenetic quality resonant of the visual representations of sound waves or seismic tremors. Geological diagrams, particularly cross-sections through landscapes and the cartographer’s aerial view, are also an acknowledged source of inspiration. The implied flatness and exposed strata of geological cross-sections have affinities with Casey-Brogan’s approach to painting which combines the desire to produce smooth surfaces with the need to accumulate and erode layers of paint. The forms in some of her paintings resemble cartographic features and if we think of these images as landscapes seen from a great distance, as if from the air or through binoculars, the intended sense of grandeur is revealed.

Always mindful of her audience, Casey-Brogan’s decision to limit the size of her work, demands an intimate viewing experience. She often exhibits her paintings in grids or groups and, in this form, they resemble pages in a diary or postcards never sent: hinting at narrative but never succumbing to representation. Ultimately, the 21 works in this exhibition, each condensed to a jewel-like form, prove that it is often under constraint that the most original art is made.

[i] Hannah Casey-Brogan, ‘Motherhood and Art’ https://www.mathair.co.uk/blog/motherhood-and-art-by-hannah-casey-brogan accessed 12/10/2018.

Dr Riann Coulter is currently curator at F.E. McWilliam Gallery & Studio

Curator, arts manager and art historian specialising in Irish and British modern and contemporary art. Over 15 years experience curating and co-curating exhibitions for regional and national institutions throughout Ireland including IMMA, RHA and National Museums Northern Ireland. Extensive publication record for both academic and popular audiences. Experienced public speaker and educator.

(Bio extract from LinkedIn)