Lorraine Dunne

Aoife on Dollymount, 2022

Oil on canvas board

"This is a portrait of my daughter Aoife. I tried to capture that fleeting, sweet moment of time the Irish summer offers with the essential ice cream on the beach. The light focuses on the ice cream and face and the landscape fades to a simple suggestion. I wanted to reminisce with the viewer, to be drawn into that first lick; and so unusually for a portrait, Aoife has her eyes closed and her head tilted almost out of the canvas, allowing the viewer  to drool unwatched." - Lorraine Dunne

Lorraine Dunne has had a keen interest in visual art since childhood. She attended the National College of Art and Design, Dublin, at night in her early 30s to do life drawing, but life got in the way of art. After a 25-year hiatus from painting, she returned to paint a memorial portrait of her father-in-law, who died during the COVID pandemic. She subsequently returned to college and is studying Fine Art at the Atlantic Technological University. She has always had an interest in faces. In an age when images are crafted and fixed, she wants to draw the viewer into that unguarded moment  that reveals the real story. Oil paint is her favourite medium.

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