July 21 to August 10, 2017

In 2013 Nick Miller began a series of paintings of flowers that were a personal response to working on a long term creative project at Sligo’s North West Hospice and to his own mother’s terminal illness. Using her collection of vases, bottles and pots, he made arrangements of whatever flowers or plants the season offered. These became both celebrations of life and momento mori, a role that still life painting has traditionally played in Western art. The paintings were made with a sense of urgency that Miller describes as “seeing the fullness of life before it passes. Making paintings this way offered some release in the face of transience and mortality, while still gambling on an afterlife in pigment itself”.

The Catherine Hammond gallery is proud to show these life-affirming paintings, most for the first time in Ireland. Sean Rainbird, Director of the National Gallery of Ireland, opened the exhibition on July 21.

Nick Miller (b. 1962 London) moved to Sligo in 1984 and was elected as a member of Aosdána in 2001. He has exhibited widely including solo shows at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the RHA, and the New York Studio School. His work is held in private and public collections worldwide.