Visual Arts

Pauline Bewick

Born in Northumbria in 1935, Pauline Bewick was brought up on a small farm in Co. Kerry and travelled all over Ireland with her mother in caravans, houseboats and railway carriages. She attended school in England and Wales, returning to Ireland to attend the National College of Art & Design. Her work is predominantly of nature and demon often freely intermingles with the countryside of Kerry, Tuscany or the South Pacific.

In 1986, the Guinness Storehouse in Dublin held a retrospective exhibition, Two to Fifty, which included 1,500 works dating from when she was two years old, and which travelled to museums around Ireland. From 1989 to 1991, she lived in Polynesia with her two daughters, and on returning exhibited a collection of works called South Seas, some of which were also published in a book in 1996.

In 1996, the Royal Hibernian Academy exhibited the Yellow Man series of paintings, a theme that later evolved to include sketches, watercolours, oils, tapestry, stained glass, music, dance and theatre. The Yellow Man collection now numbers more than 700 objects, and remains together in the artist’s collection.

Her biography, Pauline Bewick: Painting a Life, by art historian and former director of the National Gallery of Ireland Dr. James White, was published in 1985. She lives in Co. Kerry.

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