Clement McAleer – Selected Work, 1973 – 2023 – F.E McWilliam Gallery
QSS artist Clement McAleer will present a major survey exhibition of selected works from 1973 – 2023 at The F.E. McWilliam Gallery, Armagh from 14 October 2023 – 3 February 2024
The exhibition opens on Saturday 14th October 2023, 3.00pm to 5.00pm.
Gallery Opening Times: Monday – Saturday 10am – 5pm
Clement McAleer was born in Co. Tyrone. After the Foundation Course in Belfast (1971-72) he studied Fine Art at Canterbury College of Art (1972-75) and the Royal College of Art, London (1975-78). He was awarded the J Andrew Lloyd Award for Landscape Painting (RCA) in 1978 before moving to Liverpool where he was a prizewinner in the John Moores Exhibition (XI). He then settled in Liverpool and was based in a studio in the Bluecoat Arts Centre for twenty five years. He kept in regular contact with his home base in Ireland over the years with residencies and holding exhibitions in various parts of the country. In 2003 he then moved to Belfast where he joined Queen Street Studios (Belfast’s oldest established artist’s studio group). In 1981 he was awarded a Major Award by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and in the same year completed a Mural commission for The Royal Liverpool Hospital.
The focus of McAleer’s paintings, is primarily landscape; not the particularities of place, but rather the restless, shifting aspects of nature where cloud or water, land or sea transforms themselves atmospherically, one into another. The Irish coast is a dominate source and the memory of it lurks everywhere in the studio. Travels in Europe and America have also inspired a number of works, particularly the series of railway paintings in Italy, Germany and the Netherlands, where a stronger emphasis on structure again entered the work. Sometimes a visible grid is created and then submerged, abstracting each painting, serving also to release it slowly as the sense of ‘being there’ establishes itself.
