Irish Arts Review – Reflections: Solo Exhibition, Source Arts Centre – June 2023.

Bernadette Doolan’s ceramics and paintings at the Source Arts Centre, Thurles use the female figure as a conduit for conflicting emotions, vulnerability and strength. Working intuitively and channelling the instincts of childhood mark-making, Doolan intends to ‘honour the spirit of childhood’…

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Irish Arts Review – Wexford Festival Opera, Open Studio – October 2021.

Enniscorthy artist Bernadette Doolan opens her studio to the public during the Wexford Opera Festival. In her work as a portraitist, Doolan explores the fragility of childhood identity, uncovering the strengths and vulnerabilities of her subjects. Doolan was recently invited to become a member of the British Society of Women Artists…

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Irish Arts Review – Youyi Travelling Group Exhibition, Shanghai, China – November 2019.

An exhibition of twenty art works and five poems by contemporary Irish artists and writers has been brought together in ‘Youyi Visual’. The exhibition showcases contemporary artistic practice in Ireland and celebrates the fortieth anniversary of diplomatic relations between Ireland and China. The artists participating in the exhibition are Donald Teskey, Samuel Walsh, Maurice Quillinan, Robert Ryan, Tom Climent, Una Sealy, Abigail O’Brien, Pauline Flynn, Bernadette Doolan and Helen G Blake. It was launched at the Hangzhou Public Library and is travelling to venues around southern China, the Consulate General of Ireland, Shanghai, concluding at Art Beijing, Beijing, China…

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VAI (Visual Artists Ireland) Critique: The House that built me. GOMA, Waterford – Sep 2020.

Waterford’s GOMA reopened its doors with an exhibition of oil paintings by Bernadette Doolan. ‘The House That Built Me’ presents a selection of figures and scenes said to explore memory and emotion. While the exhibition’s title suggests a deeply personal reflection, Doolan acknowledges that “the figure in my paintings represents me as a child but also a universal self”. With these paintings she aims to connect the viewer to their own lived experience, by creating what she calls “a psychological pause”. The subject of this work is childhood, so where a viewer’s experience comes into play, it inevitably lends itself to more personalised memories and concepts of childhood. ‘The House That Built Me’ refers to the influences which shape our growth into adolescence and her titles underline a clear imagery around these moments of development. In a gallery talk on 29 August with Aoibhie McCarthy, Director of Cork’s Sample-Studios, we learned of the artist’s early clay reliefs, as well as her studies in psychology. Both facets are utilised here to tell us something about imagined worlds…

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The Art Explorer: The House that built me Review – Sep 2020

A few months into Covid’s new normal and I was longing for an alternative conversation. Something creative, physical and real, beyond the flat screen digital media and the ubiquitous mask. This might account for the heightened sense of reality I felt, as I set out on my first visit in months, to both city and art gallery. After a lengthy car journey, I arrived at Lombard Street Waterford. I stepped out onto a small car-park like a helipad. When suddenly I was surrounded by a panorama of city buildings, all fractured and fragmented; a brick a brack of living spaces all mixed together over time, layer upon layer, rising up like a great amphitheater from Waterford’s narrow streets and back lanes; an intriguing jumble of extensions, conversions and add-ons of all types, even one little wooden shack attached to the ledge of a second storey. I looked around me Like a released prisoner soaking it all up…

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Irish Independent (Independent News & Media) Wexford People article – Nov 2018

A desire to help was a Wexford artist’s inspiration to paint socially conscious pieces and paintings that depict the human condition, which will be exhibited at Ireland’s premier art fair Art Source, at the RDS from November 9-11.
Bernadette Doolan was thrust from ceramics into painting when she decided to help the homeless through Focus Ireland.

The Enniscorthy resident who has just won the 2018 Irish News Prize at the Royal Ulster Academy of Arts, was forced to paint when plans to make ten pieces of ceramics were ruined by a broken kiln.

‘The homeless issue was prevalent even back in 2005 and I always wondered what I could do to help,’ said Bernadette who won the RUA award at the Academy’s 137th annual exhibition a few weeks ago for a work depicting the theme of Ireland today, titled ‘Feeling Awkward, Not Fitting In’…

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Irish Arts Review – Fringe Festival, Open Studio – October 2018.

Enniscorthy artist Bernadette Doolan opens her studio to the public during the Wexford Opera Festival. In her work as a portraitist, Doolan explores the fragility of childhood identity, uncovering the strengths and vulnerabilities of her subjects. Doolan was recently invited to become a member of the British Society of Women Artists…

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Irish Independent – Wexford Artists Exhibition, Napal – July 2018

EU Ambassador to Nepal Veronica Cody launched an art exhibition of Wexford based artists at the Siddhartha Art Gallery in Kathmandu. The exhibition was supported by Wexford Arts Centre and Culture Ireland in association with Art Spies and Trish Robinson of Pigyard Gallery who helped to curate the collection. The exhibition showcased mixed media works by Bernadette Doolan, Olivia O’ Dwyer, Declan Cody, Michael Duggan, Paddy Lennon and Kate Murphy. and was on display at the Babar Mahal Revisited where the Siddharta Art gallery is located in Kathmandu…

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Nepali Times – Wexford Artists Exhibition, Napal – July 2018

Ask any Nepali about Ireland, and most have no idea where it is and some may mention the Irish pubs in Lukla, Thamel or Pokhara. Ask a person on the street what a ‘Guinness’ is and the answers will pertain more to a certain book of world records rather than the dark beer. Which is why the first-ever exhibition of Irish art in Nepal is such a landmark in Kathmandu’s cultural firmament. It is a small brief window that gives people here in Kathmandu a glimpse of the sensibilities of this gentle land on the edge of the north Atlantic. The artists, affiliated with Wexford Arts Center in Ireland, have brought to the Siddhartha Art Gallery an eclectic collection that includes landscapes, portraits, mixed media and photographs…

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Sunday Independent – Spotlight on gifted mum and daughter – Dec 2017

When talented Megan-Kate Doolan stepped out into the spotlight to launch her debut EP recently, her artist mother Bernadette was amazed at the quiet confidence her eldest daughter exuded. “I’m not musical and I think it’s incredible that she has the ability to stand up and sing what she has created in front of other people,” she says. “I’d rather hide in the corner”…

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Irish Independent (Gorey Guardian) Annual Lyons Club Judging – Mar 2018

Bernadette Doolan said judging the annual Lions Club Open Submission exhibition was one of the most difficult things she has had to do. As an established artist and Royal Ulster Academy award winner with solo and group shows under her belt, Bernadette is aware of the courage it takes to produce a painting in the privacy of a studio or kitchen corner and allow it to be hung on a wall in a public gallery for people to view and judge. ‘That is a huge accomplishment and the reason why everyone who has a painting or drawing on the wall here today is a winner,’ said Bernadette…

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Irish Independent (Enniscorthy Guardian) – Artists reshape the globe for GOAL – Nov 2018

Bernadette Doolan’s globe is called ‘What if we left Mother Nature to do her thing?’ and her idea was to portray the beauty in the world, its potential, vulnerability and yet, its strength. To achieve that, she used porcelain roses to represent the countries, giving Ireland a gold rose to represent the work done by GOAL and the Irish reputation of being warm and welcoming. She also drew abstract branches, connecting the roses, that resemble the arteries of the heart…

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Irish Independent (Enniscorthy Guardian) – Creative Hub Opens – Aug 2018

Wexford County Council has opened a massive creative space in the heart of Wexford town, bringing together a diverse collective of 25 artists, craft makers and performers under one convenient and sociable roof. The Creative Hub at Cornmarket Mall has transformed a once-derelict shopping mall linking the Main Street with Mallin Street which lay dark and empty for years until it was bought and upgraded by businessman Eamonn Buttle of South East Radio…

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Watt’s Up – Ceramic Exhibition – La Fondation d’entreprise Bernardaud, Limoges, France 2014

Watt’s Up? explores the relationship between ceramics and light by presenting some 30 works of art worldwide, all created in recent years. Oddly enough, this relationship seems to inspire artists more than designers, trained to create objects such as lamps. Perhaps that’s because a lamp is more than an object. The light from a lamp changes our entire perception 
of space and movement, giving the world a whole new dimension and altering how we see things. Light also evokes symbolism, poetry and mystery. As the French author Jean Giono once put it, very clever mysteries hide in the light…

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Artist conversation with Aoibhie Mc Carthy, The House That Built me GOMA Waterford [VIDEO]

Artist Bernadette Doolan in Q&A session at GOMA Waterford August 2020.

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Opening of exhibition by curator Anya von Gosseln [VIDEO]

Anya von Gosseln opens Bernadette Doolan’s Wexford Opera Festival 2016 in Selskar Street Wexford Sun 23rd October 2016…
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196 exhibition opening by Colm O’Gorman Executive Director Amnesty International Ireland [VIDEO]

196 Exhibition officially opened by Colm O’Gorman and Leszek Wolnik at the Copperhouse Gallery Dublin, 5th June 2015…

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