ABOUT
Kaye Maahs is a painter and a native of Kerry who has been living and working in the Burren, County Clare since 2003. She was recently awarded an Art Council Ireland, Agility Award (2021) that will allow her time to focus on developing a new body of work in 2022. Kaye was also a recipient of the Clare Artists' Mentoring Scheme with Glor, Ennis (2020) supported by Creative Ireland & the Arts Council Ireland; her mentor was Una Sealy, RHA, Dublin. She was awarded the Thomas Dammann Junior Memorial Trust Award (2019) enabling her to travel to Iceland for research. Kaye's painting 'White Grandeur' was shortlisted for the 251st Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, London (2019) and in March of the same year she was Curators Choice at the Hunt Museum, Limerick. In 2018 Kaye was an invited artist at the Royal Hibernian Academy Annual Exhibition, Dublin. She was also a recipient of the Clare County Council's Tyrone Guthrie Artist Bursary Award (2017) and the Heinrich Böll Cottage Residency on Achill Island, Mayo (2017). Kaye has also been awarded residencies with the Cill Rialaig Project Residency (2016), (2019). Kaye holds a BA in Fine Art (2015) from the Centre of Creative Arts & Media, GMIT, Galway.
Recent shows include RHA Annual Exhibition (2020), Cairde Visual (2019), Kerry Visual Artist Showcase (2019), September Group Show, Claremorris Gallery Mayo (2018), Hermione, Curated by Aisling Prior (2018), Claremorris Open Exhibition, Curated by Tom Morton (2017), VUE Art Fair at the RHA with Claremorris Gallery (2017), Boyle Arts Festival (2017), and the 9 Walls Exhibition (2017) at the Hyde Bridge Gallery, Sligo.
Recent shows include RHA Annual Exhibition (2020), Cairde Visual (2019), Kerry Visual Artist Showcase (2019), September Group Show, Claremorris Gallery Mayo (2018), Hermione, Curated by Aisling Prior (2018), Claremorris Open Exhibition, Curated by Tom Morton (2017), VUE Art Fair at the RHA with Claremorris Gallery (2017), Boyle Arts Festival (2017), and the 9 Walls Exhibition (2017) at the Hyde Bridge Gallery, Sligo.
'Kaye Maahs’s own paintings more closely recall the Romanticism of Casper David Friedrich. Her stark expanses of woodland, water and mountains are often shrouded in mist and there is a reflective, melancholy note to them, their mood enhanced by her spare, judicious palette, evoking both the landscape and an inner world.'
Aidan Dunne
Irish Times Art Critic
'Maahs draws from the lexicon of Irish painting but her visual language is confident and does not mimic, nor is she overburdened by prevailing notions of "Irish Painting" : the artist's voice is authentic and her technique masterful. Her subject matter is ordinary; the landscape which surrounds her, but her engagement with it is fresh, true and beautiful.'
Rosemarie Noone
Claremorris Gallery Director
'Kaye’s work is rich with paint, yet economical. She doesn’t flatter the viewer with the importance of your gaze. You are small in her landscape, yet utterly privileged to be there…. There is a play here with forms and mass, with an unnerving light and a tender palette. And there is a story told, once again with the landscape as the hero and we—as observers—are only incidental.’
Sara Foust, Artist
http://www.mayonews.ie/living/32771-landscape-reclaimed
'The good painting continued in the galleries on Mount Street. First up were the flooded landscapes of Kaye Maahs. I loved the atmospheric simplicity of these works that captured an eerie stillness after the trauma of a recent deluge.'
Eamon Maxwell
Curator