Claire Callinan: memory, childhood, and the textures of loss
Photo by Aarif Amod
La Catedral Studios, Dublin — Born and raised briefly in Belgium but raised in Dublin from the age of three, Claire Callinan’s artistic vision is inseparable from the city she calls home. Her early work often reflects a sense of searching, shaped by years of travel —“I would travel at any opportunity, and the only thing consistently packed was my camera”— capturing fleeting moments and distant landscapes while negotiating a sense of belonging. That tension between restlessness and homecoming continues to inform her paintings, creating a quiet dialogue between place, memory, and self.
Childhood recurs throughout Claire’s work, not as literal recollection but as an emotional landscape. Summers spent in the Irish countryside and a generally happy upbringing inform a perspective that lingers between play and reflection. The experiences of her grandmother, whose dementia brought a reversion to childlike habits, also resonate in her recent series, highlighting the paradoxical ways in which aging can mirror youth. Through this lens, Claire explores universal experiences of loss, isolation, and transformation, imbuing them with both intimacy and observation.
Technically, her paintings are characterised by vivid colour, strong contrasts, and an embrace of incompleteness. Early attempts at precise realism gave way to a style where fragments and visible underpainting become expressive tools, echoing the ways memory itself can fade or distort over time. Her process often begins with feeling, allowing imagery to emerge through emotional resonance rather than rigid plan, a practice that encourages viewers to connect on a personal level.
Recognition, such as the Thomas Dammann Junior Memorial Trust Award, has reinforced her confidence and affirmed the direction of her practice. Residencies, including a transformative four-week stay at Kylemore Abbey, have provided both space and community, allowing her to refine her work while engaging closely with other artists.
Claire’s first solo exhibition, Past Tense: f r a g m e n t e d, currently on view in Belfast, continues these explorations. The series examines the fragility of memory, the inevitable loss of innocence over time, and the return to childlike tendencies under the pressures of aging. Using film photography as reference, she translates the degradation of memory into painted form, manipulating images and layering oil paint to convey permanence and weight, while leaving areas of gouache underpainting exposed to suggest disconnection and decay. The exhibition opened at Cultúrlann McAdam Ó Fiaich on 22 January and will run until 5 March, marking a significant milestone in her career as a painter.
Her connection to La Catedral Studios, first sparked as a student visitor in 2018, has deepened over time. “Before I had a studio here, I worked in any corner of my family home. At La Catedral, there’s always someone to bounce ideas off or simply sit and chat.” The studio’s communal environment provides both solitude for concentration and a space for dialogue, reflection, and playful exchange—an environment Claire values as a sustaining part of her artistic life.
Through her practice, Claire Callinan captures the subtle interplay between memory and perception, childhood and adulthood, permanence and decay, inviting viewers to navigate the delicate traces of experience she renders with colour, shadow, and layered texture.
Written by Federica Paletta