Cecilia Danell (b.1985) is a Swedish-born, Ireland-based painter with a multidisciplinary practice that incorporates sculpture, film, and textiles. Her work explores landscape, memory, and the psychological impact of place through a distinctive and contemplative aesthetic. Her work explores the overarching theme of contemporary landscapes and our unfulfilled yearning for that which is primal and unspoilt, filtered through the lens of psychogeography, Science Fiction and the sublime. In a practice which is rooted in materiality and process, the starting point for Danell’s work is a first-hand engagement with the landscape of the area in Sweden where she grew up. Bodily memories of moving through the places she depicts are mirrored in the physical endeavour of painting on a large scale, which creates its own spatial choreography. A new series of large paintings considers ideas around spectatorship and participation, inspired by the large nature dioramas at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. We are presented with scenes that invite the viewer to step into them, yet the 2D surfaces of her paintings prevent us. Danell continuously points back to this push and pull between realism, abstraction and the materiality of paint itself. The human urge to find solace in a primeval landscape grows increasingly stronger amidst the uncertainty of our current condition. Yet wilderness is for the most part a construct and the places she depicts are managed forest landscapes. Her sculptural objects, which often accompany the paintings in the space, use the language of theatre props to construct objects with the surreal quality of being made in the likeness of something, yet falling short of true semblance.
Cecilia Danell is the recipient of the 2022 RHA Hennessy Craig Award for painting, the 2024 Merrion Plinth Award, the ESB Keating Award at the 190 th RHA Annual Exhibition, a 2017 Arts Council Next Generation Award and the 2011 Wexford Arts Centre Emergence Award and has received several bursary and project awards from the Irish Arts Council. Recent exhibitions include: ‘These Magnetic Magnitudes’ (solo) Solstice Arts Centre, Navan, Curated by Brenda McParland (2025), ‘What the Plants Know’ Galway International Arts Festival, 126 Gallery (2024), ‘Kevin Kavanagh Presents: Cecilia Danell’ (solo) Dunamaise Arts Centre, Portlaoise (2024), ‘Following Threads’ Crawford Art Gallery, Cork (2023) ‘A Stillness Expanded’ (solo) Claremorris Gallery (2023), ‘Brush Lightly Through Fireweed Forests’ (solo) Kevin Kavanagh, Dublin (2022), ‘GENERATION2022: New Irish Painting’ Butler Gallery, Kilkenny (2022), ‘Parklife’ The Glucksman, Cork (2022), ‘Tactile Terrain’ (solo), Luan Gallery, Athlone (2022), The Hennessy Craig Award Exhibition, RHA, Dublin (2022), ‘I Trust The Quiet’ (solo), Burren College of Art Gallery, Co Clare (2021), ‘Mise en scène’, Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris (2021), I set a Bait for the Unknown’ (solo), Kevin Kavanagh, Dublin (2020), ‘In a Landscape’ (solo) Ashford Gallery, RHA, Dublin (2019), ‘Winter Wanderer’ (solo), Kevin Kavanagh, Dublin (2019) and ‘Futures – Series 3 Episode 2’, RHA, Dublin (2018). Residencies include Monson Arts, Maine USA (2024), Áras Eanna Arts Centre, Inis Oirr (2024), Interface Inagh, Connemara (2024), Ballinglen Arts Foundation (2021), Centre Culturel Irlandais, Paris (2020) and the Nordic Artists’ Centre Dale, Norway (2016). Her work is in several public collections including the Irish Arts Council, the Irish
State, Trinity College Dublin, University College Cork, Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Galway City Council, Wexford County Council, Region Kalmar, Sweden and Motala Municipal Council, Sweden as well as private collections in Ireland, UK, Sweden, Canada, France, Spain and Norway. A book on Danell’s work, ‘A strange Familiar Place’, with an essay by Cristín Leach was published
by the gallery in 2021 and a new hardcover book on her work with essays by Aidan Dunne and Charity Coleman will follow her Solstice Arts Centre exhibition in 2025, published by Solstice Arts Centre and Kevin Kavanagh.