Cork woman’s ‘artistic snatch at dark matter’ on show for Space Week

Thu, 09 Oct, 2025 - 07:03

Cork artist Marie Bryan is exhibiting at MTU Blackrock Castle Observatory (BCO), combining her scientific background with her passion for creativity.

Her colourful paintings and short film – which are on show during Space Week at BCO and beyond – are entitled Up There.

As Marie explains, this body of work is “an artistic snatch at dark matter” which was produced this year at MTU Crawford College of Art and Design during her first year there studying fine art. She got plenty of encouragement from her lecturers who told her to have fun with her unique creations.

Marie has a curious, probing mind but, also a light side, evidenced by her love of fashion and design, right down to her magenta-coloured hair. Aesthetics are important to her. So too is scientific inquiry. It was to the rigour of science that she was drawn at UCC, from where she graduated with a BSc.

Having only really discovered her artistic side when she started painting following her husband’s death in 2019, 55-year-old Marie says that it would have suited her to study literature in her youth.

“I like to invent things, I like fiction and I like playing with words. In my art projects, I like to bring people with me.”

When her husband, Dave Bryan died, Marie says it made her “stand on my own two feet”.

The dual nature of her talents meant that while she would have been happy working in scientific research, Marie would have all the time been looking “for a bit of colour”.

She worked as a clerical officer at the Central Statistics Office in Mahon for two decades and got married at the age of 43. Marie enjoyed working as a dairy farmer with her husband in Carrignavar. But when he died, she had to reluctantly give up farming as she doesn’t have the physical strength to do certain essential jobs on the land.

The first covid lockdown was the catalyst for Marie’s focus on art.

”I did an online course in life drawing with Eileen Healy run by the Crawford. I really enjoyed it. I put a portfolio together and submitted it to Douglas Street Campus. I felt that my drawings and paintings were good for a beginner. I was accepted into the college.”

Marie went on to volunteer at the Crawford Art Gallery, working from the curator’s office. “The Crawford had an exhibition at the time called ‘Meat and Potatoes’. My internship project was to make the exhibition accessible and relatable for a person that might walk into the gallery off the street, feeling that they can’t judge art or relate to it. So I spoke about my personal relationship with art. I brought a lot of my farming history to it.”

Kinsale College was Marie’s next port of call where she learned a lot about portraiture.

This led to an exhibition in 2023 of grainy portraits of service users at Cork Simon, at Cork Airport and in libraries, garnering a lot of publicity.

“I had done a couple of self-portraits. It came to me very quickly. When I’m doing a portrait, I’m interested in people’s life stories which might be expressed in their face.”

This academic year, Marie is studying sculpture and film at the Crawford. She is excited about her BCO exhibition, adding: “It’s an upbeat reach for the unknown.”

Work began with Marie’s creation of what she has termed a ‘world donut’ (a donut-shaped globe). “It’s a visual representation of an idea to alter the earth’s magnetic system where I pondered how to sustain the earth’s location in space,” she explains.

With suspension in mind, Marie has illustrated herself climbing her star sign Sagittarius and then venturing onwards and upwards to climb the universe by means of a family tree climbing frame. She has used colour spontaneously, with scientific research and brainstorming.

In her short film, Donutless Beach, Marie bravely and optimistically ventures “outside of the universe – or perhaps just outside of known dimensions – in search of the donut”. She is accompanied by bleeping aliens and by a wasp butterfly. “It is quite a trip. We clearly ought to go further.”

Marie is fascinated by the fact that 95% of the universe “has not been found. There’s dark matter and dark energy out there but it has never been recorded. It’s been a case of me putting my artistic and hopeful slant on it, maybe religious and looking for an afterlife.

“I’d hope to enter a new dimension or several new dimensions when I die. With my energy, I’d like to be flying around the sky. I was showing Alan Giltinan (manager of BCO) my vision and my understanding of the universe. He suggested an exhibition.”

With the demand for water predicted to outstrip supply in the world as soon as 2030, Marie says that issue requires serious attention.

Does she ever feel depressed about the future of planet earth?

“Not at all. I think it’s up to myself and each individual to do what we can to decrease pollution in various forms.”

Marie says she had ideas of sustaining the earth in space “with the world donut changing magnetics and how that would impact. I looked into it scientifically. It’s an artistic idea and such ideas can inspire the direction of science. But it’s not a runner.”

She has taken liberties with her highly colourful paintings in Up There. Going boldly where many artists might fear to tread....