5th January 2022
Join us for a virtual launch of Songs of the Sea, a new exhibition by artist Rikki-Louise van den Berg on Wednesday 12th, 1pm via Facebook live @roevalleyarts.
Rikki will discuss her works and do a small exhibition tour of her new exhibition Songs of the Sea.
Originally from Holland, Rikki spend her formative years in Ireland. In 1997 she returned to Ireland establishing herself as a figurative and abstract painter, embarking on a personal journey in search of identity and place.
Her work has received both national and international acclaim and is currently represented by several renowned galleries in Ireland and Northern Ireland. In 2012, Rikki's work was selected as part of a small group of Irish painters to participate in ‘Irish Wave 3’, Beijing, China, curated by BIGsmall and Fion Gunn. A series of visual art events were held in Beijing and Shanghai in March 2012, continuing into 2013. In 2016 Rikki received the Tyrone Gurthrie Residency Award for the second time, which followed by being selected for the Royal Hibernian Academy Annual Show in 2017, marking an important point in her career as a landscape artist. She has recently been nominated for the Hambly & Hambly French Residency Award 2022; an artist residency in France under mentorship of Irish Artist Eamon Colman in collaboration with Centre Culturel Irlandais Paris. Rikki continues to explore the dialogue between artist,land and coast in the beautiful surroundings of Donegal.
"My work is an inner-response to my outside world, my surroundings, to nature; it's vulnerable beauty, colours, movement, contrasts, it's fleeting moments of timelessness.
To me the essence of painting lies in the process, the learning, mark making, the discovery. It's about expressing what I feel. During the painting process I can build, destroy, uncover, paint over, wash and scrape, apply layers of paint by knife or hands or even sometimes from a distance. An intriguing conversation between me and the canvas, mirroring perhaps the acts of nature on the landscape.
I work intuitively and I welcome the tempestuous, the surprise and unexpected beauty in a stroke, movement or colour".
The exhibition will be in 2 galleries showing a collection of new works from 2021, ranging from small to large works, inspired by the the sea, the coastline and Rikki's explorative walks along the shores of Inishowen.
