Mary Lohan was born in Dublin in 1954. She studied painting at the National College of Art and Design and was a member of the Board there from 1996 to 1999. Mary Lohan works with incredibly thick impasto that oozes over the edges of her paintings, encrusting itself in layer upon layer of oil that clings to the sides of the canvas and extends the picture plane to hover in mid-space in front of the gallery wall. The rough, tactile use of paint is echoed in her fascination with the barren coastlines Donegal, Mayo and Wexford, and the physicality of her painting allows the viewer to experience the rolling and crashing of the waves against the shore.
Mary Lohan was awarded the Taylor De Vere Award at the 1991 RHA Annual Exhibition and 1st Prize at the ClaremorrisOpen Exhibition in 1992. She was a member of the Board of the National College of Art and Design from 1996 to 1999 and was elected to Aosdána in 2001. In recent years she as shown her work at the National Gallery and Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, the Linenhall Arts Centre, Mayo and the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin. She has regular solo shows in the Vangard Gallery in Cork, and is frequently included in major exhibitions focusing on the Irish landscape in art. Her work is featured in the collections of the Department of the Taoiseach, AIB, the OPW, A & L Goodbody Solicitors, Bank of Ireland and in various private collections in Ireland, Europe, Japan and America.
Exhibitions with Taylor Galleries:2008 New Paintings
2004 New Paintings
2001 Shore
1998 Sea Met Sky
1995 Sea, Sand, Land & Light
1992 Elements
1991 Donegal