Bernadette Kiely was born in Tipperary in 1958 and studied at the School of Art & Design in Waterford and the Slade School of Fine Art, London. She now lives and works in Thomastown, Co. Kilkenny where she teaches part-time at the Grennan Mill Craft School. Kiely’s practice is driven by an intimate connection to the places she paints, and is the product of a process that involves a close examination of her subject through drawing, photographing and experiencing the landscape first-hand at all times of the day and throughout the changing seasons.
Bernadette Kiely is a member of Aosdána and was awarded a Fellowship at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Mayo in 2001. She has also completed residencies at Cill Rialaig Artists Retreat, Kerry and the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Monaghan. Recent exhibitions include shows with Rosses Gallery, Donegal; Clinton Centre, Fermanagh; Model Arts and Niland Gallery, Sligo; Catherine Hammond Gallery, Cork; and Claremorris Gallery, Mayo. Kiely recently collaborated with the poet Derek Mahon in making a series of drawings and watercolours for his limited edition book Somewhere the Wave, published by The Gallery Press. Her work is included in private collections in Ireland, the UK, Europe and America, as well as the public collections of AIB, University Hospital, Cork, the OPW, the National Self Portrait Collection in Limerick and the George Moore Society.
Exhibitions with Taylor Galleries:
2009 Simple Harmonic Motion
2007 Real and Apparent
2005 Slow Time: Donegal
2002 The Milky Way is always clearly visible
2000 Moon River Sky
1998 Breathing Spaces