Maureen Mullarkey

Hector McDonnell, Ulster Artist

This how the House of Lords ends—in the arts. Hector McDonnell is an established painter, etcher and illustrator born and raised in County Antrim, Northern Ireland. Raised in Glenarm Castle to be exact. McDonnell is the younger son of the 13th Earl of Antrim, Ulster’s only aristocratic Catholic titleholder. Hector’s older brother—an architect—is the 14th Earl, still living in the family castle. Glenarm, like so many of England’s great houses, helps pay the heating bills by opening itself to the public at certain times of the year, as well as for weddings and corporate events. Continue Reading
Dorothea Rockburne's Astronomy Drawings

A distinguished abstract painter, Dorothea Rockburne’s public profile is surprisingly modest in relation to her achievement. The names of her painting instructors at Black Mountain College in the 1950s—Franz Kline, Philip Guston and Jack Tworkov—are more widely recognized among the general public than her own. Nevertheless, her worldwide exhibition record is as enviable as her many prestigious fresco commissions. “Astronomy Drawings,” now on the final leg of a national tour that began one year ago at Wheaton College, is a testament to a long and laudable career. Continue Reading
Julie Speed: Not From Here

With so much contemporary figuration built on photography, it is refreshing to meet a painter who puts away the camera. Julie Speed is as much a showman as a painter; the inscrutability and frequent magic of her compositions makes the camera irrelevant. Born in Chicago in 1951, Speed is a lifelong lover of drawing, an evident fact that likely contributed to her impatience with art school. She dropped out early on and makes no bones about it. After a string of oddball jobs, she landed in Austin, Texas, in 1978. Continue Reading
New Life for a Traditional Device

Paul Caranicas’ minimalist landscapes—if that is what they are—rank among the most interesting paintings on the contemporary scene. They remind us that freshness is a quality of mind, one that has nothing to do with conventional idiosyncrasy. Caranicas views his own contemporary locales through a compositional device used by Canaletto during his stay in London. Caranicas frames his paintings to the advantage of peripheral vision. He skirts the center of our field of view and explores—no, celebrates—the wealth of overlooked shapes that exist off the center of our gaze.  Continue Reading