Gareth Reid’s portrait is an experiment in colour, writes Angela Griffith of this year’s recipient of the Ireland–U.S. Council and Irish Arts Review Portraiture Award
She sits quietly in the picture, her head turned away from the viewer. She is elsewhere in her own thoughts, unaware of our gaze. She is poised, reflecting a self-assured maturity. However, on closer inspection, the face and body reveal a being that is much younger than first assumed. The subject is a girl at a point of change, a child on the threshold of womanhood. There emanates a sense of expectation from the image; she is prepared for her future. The subject can be placed within a long tradition of female portraiture. From the 15th century to contemporary practice, paintings of female adolescents and women have served as symbols of their family’s wealth and status – or ambitions in this regard – as pawns or prizes in marriage negotiations, as muses, as objects of desire, and as evocations of virtue and of beauty. In this painting, the subject’s quiet, yet assertive, confidence counterbalances historical legacies.
The Glucksman Library at the University of Limerick is now one of the most digitally advanced libraries in the world, writes Judith Hill