Ciara Roche Study no.5

These tiny paintings of interior domestic spaces were originally presented as part of the online exhibition Home from Home, developed by the Glucksman to provide insight into the extraordinary situation of being confined to our places of residence during the COVID 19 pandemic. In a palette of pink, green, yellow and brown hues, the artist provides a close-up view of the everyday surroundings and routine tasks that marked our days under stay-at-home public health orders. Room corners and doors feature prominently, creating a sense of containment and the impossibility of moving much beyond our allocated living quarters, but there is also palpable delight in the shifting tones and transient shadow shapes formed by natural and artificial pools of light. 

In order to create these works, Roche set herself time challenges and noted that “the resulting paintings are small, intimate studies of light and colour and have been a joy to make, with no end goal in mind, a distraction, while also a sort of discovery of a place that has, now especially, become my place.”

Study no. 5 was featured as the cover image of writer Claire Keegan's 2023 book, So Late in the Day.