IRENE RYAN MALONEY

ARTIST STATEMENT

  I earned an MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago and was a member of the Fine Arts Building Gallery, Chicago for 10 years. I worked in Public Relations and Curation until the gallery closed its doors in 2007. I also exhibited my work at Gruen Gallery in River North, Arc Gallery, Artemisia Gallery and others Chicago Galleries. I have been a Professor of art at Illinois Institute of Art until recently when I transferred over the Art Institute of Pittsburgh Online Division.

My main body of work for 10 years 1990 - 2000 centered on a series called "Night Pools" in which I depicted figures in water with the only illumination coming from beneath the water. These images were award winners in many venues and are featured in the book, Art Scene Chicago 2000, by Ivy Sundell. They come under the heading of Distorted Figuration and are represented on this website.

From that series I moved into non-toxic printmaking reproducing some of my night pool images in etching. Then moving on to my current work which centers on self-images that are repeated and manipulated in such a way as to suggest entirely new designs that are more than the sum of their parts.  I use digital images that are later developed into intaglio type prints.  As both the content and process itself indicate, these prints are at once serious artistic explorations and playful peeks at the subject matter of art itself.  In the process, I make use of the accidental and incidental to achieve effect.

At this time I am working with a series called "IWO JIMA - from my father's eyes to my hands". The work is done in Intaglio Type and is based on my father's pictures that he took at the invasion of Iwo Jima. I found the photographs after his death.

My prints are a mixture of traditional medium and a very contemporary means to achieve results.  While intaglio- etching and engraving - have a long history, I realize my images with modern devices.  I shoot my images with a digital camera, and coat my zinc and plastic plates with DuPont Ultra ImagOn to receive the images.  The plates are then etched, inked and printed in the traditional way.