Geralyn secures featured artist prize in Stendal Festival event

Geralyn secures featured artist prize in Stendal Festival event

13 February 2019

A STRANGFORD artist who took up art as a means of therapeutic self-reflection has been named as featured artist for a Co Londonderry arts festival this summer.

Self-taught Geralyn Mulqueen has been producing beautiful works of art on oils, acrylics, pastels, watercolours and ceramics since 2009.

Her work was unanimously selected as the winning entry for this year’s annual Stendhal Festival which will take place at Ballymully 

Cottage Farm, Limavady, on August 15-17.

Along with a £500 prize, Geralyn’s artwork will now be featured across all Stendhal Festival branding and marketing and she will have a featured space in the festival’s art gallery at the event.

Geralyn’s work has seen her display around the world in esteemed artistic hubs such as Paris, Berlin, Dublin and now her work will reach a much more rural, but no less cultured audience in Limavady this summer.

Geralyn, who is originally from Killough, trained and worked as a barrister before motherhood and later retrained as a psychoanalytic psychotherapist in private practice. She now lives and works in Strangford.

She was artist in residence from February 2010 to April 2011 at Priory Cottages, Art Craft and Design Studios in Benburb.

Geralyn said she was “thrilled and honoured to be selected as this year’s winner. As a personal milestone and given the ethos of Stendhal, I consider this to be one of the most important things I will have done artistically 

and personally as an artist a mother and a woman.”

“My overall aims as an artist are to use colour in an authentic translation which reaches the viewer and offers a deep connection and resonance to the marks made. My work if you like is a catalyst for change. 

“I use colour spontaneously in the emotional translation and capture the essence of reflection and emergence uniquely felt.”

Colm O’Donnell, Creative director of Stendhal Festival, said: “The standard of all the entries this year was again of great quality and we thank everyone who took the time to enter the competition.

“There can be only one winner though and Geralyn’s work stood out from the start. It is vibrant and engaging and then when we then read about her background and the what’s and whys regarding her work, it all combined to form a picture of an artist, truly confident, bold and comfortable in the excellent work she is producing.”  

Geralyn has a busy schedule before appearing at Stendhal this summer with exhibitions in Belfast, Dublin, Cork and Donegal in March and April.

Visit www.stendhalfestival.com for more details.