Kate MacDonagh

Kate MacDonagh is an Irish abstract artist born in Sligo and currently living and working in Dublin, whose practice in mokuhanga and watercolor painting explores dualities of light and dark, scale and ephemerality, stillness and movement, the spectral and the material. Her ethereal mokuhanga prints, working through color and shape to create abstract compositions that engage and attract, have established her as one of Ireland's most accomplished practitioners of Japanese woodblock printing.

MacDonagh studied at the Limerick School of Art and Design, Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, the Bob Blackburn Printmaking Workshop in New York, and at MI-LAB, the Fujikawaguchiko Studio in Japan. This international training -- spanning Irish, Spanish, American, and Japanese traditions -- has given her a uniquely cosmopolitan perspective on printmaking, with mokuhanga becoming her primary focus after spending extended time in Japan over several years.

Her work is characterized by a refined minimalism in which subtle gradations of color and tone create atmospheric fields that suggest natural phenomena -- light filtering through water, the shift between day and night, the quality of air at different times. Series such as 'Vert,' 'Blue,' 'Echoes,' 'Cadence,' 'Indigo Moon,' and 'Dark Light' demonstrate her exploration of color as a vehicle for emotional and perceptual experience. Her 'Moving Still' series captures the paradox of frozen movement, while 'Borderless' -- a 252-centimeter emakimono scroll rendered in mica and sumi ink, created collaboratively with the Mokuhanga Sisters and presented at the International Mokuhanga Conference in Nara in 2021 -- extends the format of the traditional Japanese handscroll into contemporary abstract territory.

MacDonagh is a member of the Graphic Studio Dublin, where she has served on the Board of Directors since 2019. She is also a member of the Mokuhanga Sisters collective. Her work is held in public and private collections across Ireland, the United Kingdom, Spain, Germany, Slovenia, the United States, and Japan. She has received numerous artist residencies including The Model Art Centre in Sligo, MI-Lab in Japan, Colony of Painters in Islake, Slovenia, and Cill Rialaig Artists' Retreat in Kerry, Ireland. She teaches mokuhanga workshops at Graphic Studio Dublin and The Model in Sligo, and has exhibited widely in Ireland and internationally.