Michelle Boyle is an artist and curator with a studio base beside Lough Ramor in Cavan, Ireland and a developing base in Mumbai India. Identity, journeying and the legacy of human presence are central to the artist’s life experience expressed through a visual language described as “sensitive, powerful and poetic”. Boyle works in paint, photography, video and installation in the studio and in the landscape inviting the viewer in through her quiet and unassuming visual aesthetic. She borrows a line from John Berger to express her belief that in the open space of art :
‘Here is where we meet’
She presents this through her paintings, public engagement projects and cross disciplinary collaborations.
In her current paintings Boyle explores the geography of her local water filled environment as a microcosm of the human- water relationship and the interconnectivity of all water bodies. She contributes to cross disciplinary projects and water activism at the intersection of art/ local community and science.
In our modern lives, we’re losing our connection to the land, we cement over it and try to control and tame the bits we allow to exist. We’re losing sight of how essential nature is to our very well-being. I feel this wonderful collection of paintings, is a call to stop for a moment and marvel at the beauty we still have out there. It’s a call to slow down and immerse ourselves in our waters, our woodlands, our mountains, our landscapes. Allow ourselves to be held by nature, allow ourselves to disappear into the majesty of it and as Michelle so eloquently puts it, ‘ see the whole world in one place’.
Neasa Ní Chianáin- Documentary Filmmaker (Solo exhibition by Michelle Boyle ‘Here is where we meet’ United Arts Club Dublin 2024)
Select recent curated projects include ‘If water could speak, what would it say to us? ‘presented IMMA, ‘A meeting of minds’ UK & Ireland Lakes Network, and Global Network of Water Museums, Porto. Artist in The Community Award 2024 with Lough Ramor/ Virginia Town Team public on location workshop ‘Getting to know Lough Ramor’ with Dr Ken Whelan . ‘The Aesthetics of Water – A force for social change ?’ with Dr Sara Ahmed founder The Living Water Museum & ISSER Pune, TAW (Artists think about water) group exhibition ‘Exquisite River’, Ely Centre of Contemporary Art, CT, USA, Library Interventions ‘Watermark’ DLR Dublin. ‘Freshwater’ Ramor Theatre solo exhibition of paintings. She recently contributed to ‘Voices from the water’ by Dr Ronan Foley National University of Ireland Maynooth and ‘Archiving Plurality ‘ with NIVAL/ National College of Art & Design.
Building on her ancestral history and the centrality of journeying across water, the artist is currently exploring a body of work on the interconnected geographies of Ireland and India