Louise Neiland is a world-builder. Each new painting adds breadth to a painterly globe that has been expanding now for three decades. The unveiling of a Neiland solo exhibition sees the artist invite viewers to set foot on a fresh continent.
Outpost is an exhibition of new paintings that document the period of time during which they were made - in this sense, they possess the intimacy of a diary. The landscapes depicted, however, are not entirely recognizable from the painter's everyday life. Certain landmarks are rooted in reality (the pyramid upon which Neiland's daughter sits in the title painting, for instance, will be familiar to visitors of Killiney Hill), but these paintings seek to map territories hitherto unmapped.
Outpost is an exhibition of travels across the painter's innermost landscapes.
The topography of this region, the peculiarities of its architecture, creaturely presences, celestial phenomena, create loops within this painted journey. We find ourselves in a place of echoes and mysterious harbingers; the unknown revealing itself gradually, as we inch towards revelation. Neiland's paintings embrace the enigmatic - after all, we are voyaging far from home - we are travellers in a strange land.
Distance and scale are pertinent to any journey. Outpost canvases are sometimes vast - symphonies in paint, Neiland's glorious orchestration of form and space extending the emotional reach of paintings even beyond their physical dimensions. Other Outpost works are more akin to sonatas - conjured into existence on no more than the two halves of a broken breadboard.
A breadboard - all journeys begin in the most domestic of spaces, even those that will bring one to the furthest outpost.
Cornelius Browne.