Acknowledging the crucial role artists play in influencing and shaping other artistic practices, ‘The Artist’s Eye’ series asks those exhibiting in Gallery 1 to invite an artist of influence to present work in Gallery 2. In the next instalment, Siobhán Hapaska has invited artist Liliane Tomasko.

In her practice, Liliane Tomasko explores the realms of dreams, memory, the subconscious and emotion through vibrant, layered compositions. Tomasko’s abstract paintings often feature ethereal, fluid forms and richly textured surfaces using colour, tone, and shadows to create a sense of mystery, emotional depth and introspection.

For over 20 years, Liliane Tomasko has been captivated by sleep, dreams, and the inner world of the unconscious and subconscious. Earlier works began from captured photographs of dishevelled beds post-slumber, transposing the intertwinement of threads, textures, bodies and thoughts into abstract drawings and paintings. Tomasko composes canvases with curvilinear brushstrokes that fluidly intertwine, layering acrylic and fluorescent spray paint using vibrant marks and lines of colour, for her “colour activates life.” The works push toward the figurative but pull back, drawing the viewer into an inner world, invoking a feeling or moment without representing it.

The work presented here at The Douglas Hyde began with a request to photograph the gallery’s workshop, an inner sanctum hidden from audiences, behind the walls of Gallery 2. Capturing laid down tools, gathered materials, miscellaneous objects and the wake of labour, Tomasko has taken images as a starting point for a series of new works, a reverberant polychromatic diptych painting on aluminium and 12 black acrylic drawings on linen, presented within and outside beyond Gallery 2.

Tomasko pushes beyond the haptic—the sensuality material world— to explore an interior one, a state that pushes beyond the boundaries of current realities, and actions, toward limitless states of subconscious and the world of dreams.