Artist Miriam McConnon
Miriam McConnon, born Dublin 1977 is an Irish painter living and working in Cyprus. She is a Fine Art Graduate of the National College of Art and Design. In 2000, she completed a post-graduate Diploma in Fine Art Painting in Cyprus. There is a delicate beauty to her recent paintings which entices the viewer to look closer at the image. In doing so, the viewer is made to witness the hanging of the communion dress. Its form is suspended from a single metal wire and is left to sway above the solid form of the stool below. Its backdrop is empty of form. The artist has deliberately used soft, quiet colours in her paintings in order to allow the form of the dress to dominate.
The 'still life' element to the work also heightens this intensity between the viewer and the image. The decorative pattern from the fabric of the communion dress is used repeatedly in the paintings, drawing the paintings away from the 'still life' and towards decoration. This transience symbolizes the artist's struggle to let go of the communion dress and all that it represents and yet at the same time, the attempt to preserve its memory.
