All eyes on Stan’s paintings

All eyes on Stan’s paintings

8 January 2025

AN exhibition featuring paintings by a 73 year-old former Ballynahinch man has opened.

Stan Dempsey’s exhibition at Holywood Library opened on Monday and runs until January 26.

His exhibition is called ‘The Eyes Have It’ because eyes feature prominently in many of the paintings, which are mainly portraits.

One of his favourites is of the German-Irish sculptor, Imogen Stuart, who died in Dublin last March at the age of 96.

“The portrait was based on photographs taken by Gerardine Wisdom which appeared in the Nenagh Guardian,” said Stan, who now lives in east Belfast.

“Gerardine kindly and very generously gave me permission to to use her photographs and, in fact, provided me with additional copies of her photographs.”

Also included in the exhibition are portraits of Irish singer Sinead O’Connor and the acclaimed poet Michael Longley.

Stan described himself as a “non-professional artist” who has had no formal training.

“I went out 20 years ago, bought myself a box of paints, and just started painting,” he explained.

He said he was smitten straight away and soon transformed his garage into a home studio, where he paints every day.

Stan said he enjoys working with oil paint.

“You don’t need to be able to draw in order to paint with oil paint,” he continued. “The beauty of oil paint is that you can move it around until you like what you see.”

Of his art, he remarked: “I have gathered a fairly wide-ranging series of images with no further thematic coherence than their appeal to me as representations of the ‘everyday’ – people, objects, ideas – that have caught my attention for one reason or another.

“Having said that, it became clear as I assembled for this exhibition that eyes seem to feature prominently, not just as a facial feature of the portraits included, but as subjects in themselves. What else could the exhibition be called but The Eyes Have It.”

Stan’s paintings can be purchased and will be available for collection at the conclusion of the exhibition.