Deirdre Robb
Bio
Deirdre is an award winning artist whose multi disciplinary approach includes installation, painting, textile, sculpture and printmaking. Deirdre has exhibited throughout Ireland, Britain, Europe and USA. She has a broad range of experience, delivering both public and private commissions, curating shows and coordinating national and international exchange programmes. She is a founder member of Creative Exchange, and former director of The Engine Room Gallery. Past awards include a Millennium Fellowship, Arts & Humanities Scholarships, Tyrone Guthrie Award and Arts Council of Ireland Awards. Deirdre is currently working on a solo exhibition in the Engine Room gallery in April 2010 which relates to the river lagan in Belfast city.
Artist Statement
Deirdre Robb believes abstract visual art has commonalities with music. Just as a tune is an arrangement of sounds in time, and there are rules governing musical composition such as scales, keys, and principles of harmony, abstract painting has similar rules. She has applied musical principles in the creation of this series of work. Using rivers as a visual source she has uniquely connected the two cities of Belfast and Nashville (lagan & Cumberland). In this work she acknowledges both rivers impact on shaping their respective city, be this through settlement, industry, trade or travel. The strength experienced in the paintings is the evocative colour. The blues in various guises presents an aesthetic of water and conveys a captivating influence of movement and flow. She embraces the calm yet stimulates powers of interpretation with energetic life and has created tunes of depth texture and movement.