User:Ash3Guldi3/Patricia Hurl

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Patricia Hurl is an artist born in Ireland. Many of her paintings comment on life in the suburbs and the political situation of women in Ireland. Her work has been exhibited internationally. She was a member of the Temple Bar Galleries and Studios in Dublin as well as the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Hurl is currently a member of Na Cailleacha, a collective of female artists in Ireland. Hurl's art career has influenced artists and women's groups throughout Ireland.

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Patricia Hurl was born in Ireland in 1943. She met her husband, Joe Doherty, at 18 and by 1963 they were married. When Hurl was in her forties, she explored the world of painting and started a new life. Her and her husband separated in 1989 and soon after she started her partnership with a Swiss artist and filmmaker, Therry Rudin.

Hurl’s process includes oil on canvas paintings that use thick layered brush strokes, similar to impressionist painters. She typically paints with a dark palette using light colors as an accent in the scenes portrayed. Hurl does not paint distinguishing details, she keeps faces blurry. She has said that sometimes she will smear the paint around with her fingers.

Hurl’s early works had a consistent theme of life in the suburbs of Ireland and commented on the hardships of womanhood. Patricia Hurl’s painting, Pregnant Figure with Bathtub, displays the narrative of losing a child. Patricia Hurl suffered a miscarriage and subsequent abortion. She has spoken about not receiving the care she needed because of medical laws in Ireland. She recounts this experience saying, “They kept telling me the baby would drop... but it never happened... it’s just dreadful what used to happen, that was regular.” This quote shows what an impact reproductive laws had on women in Ireland and how Hurl's experience was common.

Another work by Hurl that reflects the lives of women in Irish suburbs is The Company Wife. This painting is a depiction of a woman isolated in a male-dominated setting. Patricia Hurl talks about her husband being "a keeper." However, she was very disturbed by his lifestyle that included coworkers who drank too much and made crude jokes. She talks about having to accompany him to work events and observing other wives just as uncomfortable as she was with the sexist environment.

Lots of Hurl’s work not only comments on the female experience of inequality but also comments on the traditionalism of church and state. After the 1983 referendum that gave women the same right to life as an unborn child, many art pieces surfaced, expressing the oppression women felt from the government. One of these works was Patricia Hurl’s painting entitled, Study for The Kerry Babies Trial. This painting shows three faceless judges that have a masculine dominance over the painting in which IMMA described as “depicting the anonymity and power displayed by Church and Man in deciding their fate.”

Patricia Hurl won the Norah Mc Guinness award for painting in 1984. In 1987, Hurl was a part of a group called the Women’s Artist Action Group (WAAG) which was parallel to the Guerrilla Girls in New York. Their main purpose was aiding female artists in gaining recognition and remembrance in the art world. In response to the Kerry Babies Trial, the group created paintings like Hurl’s Study for The Kerry Babies Trial, and would leave flowers outside the courthouse. Hurl said that she was scared of taking too loud of a stance for her safety and for Joanne, the defendant who was accused of killing her child.

In the late 1980s, Patricia Hurl had her first exhibition titled The Living Room: Myths and Legends. This was a solo exhibition that was held at Temple Bar Galleries & Studios. The exhibition, like most of Hurl's work, portrayed graphic themes using traditional oil on canvas painting techniques. This was an ironic comment on female life in Ireland, regardless of social status. This exhibition had a mixed reaction. Hurl’s friends and peers felt they had been exploited by the work but women around the country praised this exhibit. Many women sent in requests for Hurl to hold workshops for their women’s groups. Hurl then became a facilitator for a group in Moyross, Co Limerick. They made a series of decorative rugs using iconography and motifs to tell the story of their lives. These pieces were exhibited at the Belltable Gallery.

Hurl continued to paint and create art but took a break from showcasing her work. After the mixed reviews from her exhibit The Living Room, she practiced in private. Her work continued to show traditional themes with a gothic overtone. The most famous of her paintings are very critical of systemic misogyny and touch on gender equality and internalized homophobia.

In 2019 an exhibition titled Elliptical Affinities was shown at Highlanes Galleries in Drogheda. The theme of the exhibit was the relationship between Irish women who were artists. One of the artists' work displayed in this show was by Patricia Hurl.

Irish Gothic was a solo exhibit in the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) that was held in the summer of 2023. This exhibition showed Hurl’s paintings throughout the history of her career. IMMA defined Hurl’s subject matter by saying “that (it) deals with loss, pain, frustration and loneliness.” The paintings throughout the exhibit show a history of Ireland during Hurl’s life with traditional themes and religious motifs. However, there is a feminine perspective of the isolation and oppression that a male dominated government procured for women in Ireland in the late twentieth-century. Patricia Hurl is currently a part of a female artist group called Na Cailleacha which directly translates to The Witches. This group includes filmmakers, writers, and visual artists. All the women in the group are over 70 years old and focus on exploring creativity in old age.