Homecoming
Exhibition of Oil Paintings
by Jim Kinch
14th July - 7th August 2003
Exhibition Notes by Margaret Roddy
"The vibrant sun drenched palette of Jimmy Kinch's paintings is a clue that they were painted far from his native shores. His canvasses burst with jewel-like colours and action: sail boats cut through the foam, horses gallop on the racetrack and beach beauties soak up the sun. All images from life in his adopted homeland of Australia. Blues, greens and browns, hinting at a country where rain is seldom far away, dominate the paintings which Jimmy does of his homeland. It's thirty years since Jimmy left Ireland and he is back again with a collection of paintings for his exhibition in Galway.
Life, he admits, has been kind. "If someone had told me in 1950 that I would end up in Australia, beside the beach, and working as an artist, I would have said 'dream on'. But that's how it turned out and it's wonderful".
Jimmy hails from St. Joseph's Park in Dundalk. He studied art at Dundalk Technical College, he was very much involved in the local art scene in Dundalk in the 1960's and was a founder member of the Dundalk Art Forum.
His is a strongly figurative style which captures the heat, the action and the excitement of his adopted country. The vibrant colours reflect the strong light and vastness of the countryside and the preoccupation with the great outdoors.
By way of contrast, he uses a more subdued palette when painting pictures of Ireland. And he admits that it's a somewhat nostalgic view of Ireland that he portrays. "I'm away from the country so long, that I paint traditional views of Ireland rather than of the contemporary way of life here."
Jimmy has, however, maintained close links in Dundalk. It was these links which led him to showing work in the annual Rotary Art Exhibition , which in turn led to his staging a solo exhibition in aid of Rotary in 1999. The following year the success was repeated in Newry."
Margaret Roddy - The Dundalk Arugs