Artist Biography

Mae Holland studied at the Crawford College of Art and Design where she was awarded a BA Degree in Fine Arts in 2000 and also won the National Microelectronics Research Centre Printmaking Prize.

She has shown in many exhibitions nationally. Her most recent exhibitions are Prints from Ireland, Horace Mann Gallery, New York and Donkey Mill Art Centre (2007/08); 10 x 10: Identity in Contemporary Ireland (2008); Members Exhibition, Lavitt Gallery, Cork (2008); Celebrating Cork 2005 in the European parliament, Brussels and the Halsinglands Museum, Stockholm (2005). She has also shown in Launderette Gallery, Cork; Form Gallery, Cork; Vanguard Gallery, Cork; Triskel Arts Centre, Cork; Original Print Gallery, Dublin; Lemon Street Gallery, Dublin and Friar’s Gate Gallery, Killmallock, Co. Limerick, amongst other.

Her work is represented in both public and private collections including, Bank of New York Mellon; H&A Visual Communications Group, Cork; Maryborough House Hotel, Cork; Jack Coughlan & Associates, Cork; Mathematics Department, UCC and the National Microelectronics Research Centre, Cork.


The mystery and majesty of nature never cease to inspire me. I love colour and am always conscious of its spiritual, atmospheric and therapeutic qualities. I tend to work in series. My ‘Colourfield Series’ are drawn from the colours of the changing seasons I witnesses while traveling through Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Newfoundland, Yosemite and many other areas of America and Europe. ‘Exposed to the Elements Series’ came about through various experiments where I exposed steel plates to the elements over long periods of time. I buried plates in my garden, placed one in my local river and another in a rock-pool. These I left for several months before reclaiming, cleaning and printing the marks that formed on them during the intervening time. Some of these works became part of the ‘Beneath the Surface Series’. Following on from this experiment I documented the mark-making of the elements on the exposed limestone terrain in the Burren, which resulted in the series ‘Nature’s Jigsaw – Burren’.

Mae Holland