Press Cuttings Five Young Irish Artists

The Ritchie Hendriks Gallery, Dublin, is showing an exhibition by four young Irish painters: Brian Bourke, Michael Kane, John Kelly and David O’Docherty (and the sculptor James McKenna). This show is an exciting one, with achievement as well as promise. Its impact is strengthened by the fact that each is showing only six pictures, which meant careful selection.

John Kelly we know best. Always deeply emotional but inclined to lack subtlety, he has pared down his style to a near-abstraction which gives his brooding religiosity full scope. “The Godman”, bare in form and ascetic in colouring, is one of the best pictures in the show, In “Meeting” he has tried and managed to bring it off. The three “Sacrifices” have a spiky tension which reminds one of Sutherland.

F.P.B., The Irish Times, 10.07.1963