Thrilling, quicksilver arrangements of fierce movement, Deady’s new paintings are also, and simultaneously, models of balance, poise and restraint: amalgams of sensibility and sense, feeling and thought. With their intricate, concentric patterning and vigorous, rhythmic pulse, they relate metaphorically to the currency of daily life, the colour of moods and feelings and the dynamics of human relationships.

Occupying a space free from the rules of naturalistic representation, the paintings fuse inner and outer worlds, and allow for a longer, considered view over time. The energies of the compositions are in most cases generated by two adjoining figures, and the way they create and are in turn shaped by the traffic of interaction between them.

Powerful internal currents animate each of them, whole worlds of feeling. As with the artist’s earlier Measure for Measure works, this entails a powerful intimation of bodily presence and action: a choreography of stance, attitude, movement, gesture, nuance – and vision. Colour, sparing yet intense, sets the temperature of the mood. Spatially, we are in a zone as expansive as a biblical desert, and as abstract, in which we try to orient ourselves.

– Aidan Dunne

Recent group and solo exhibitions include True Colour, Kevin Kavanagh (2025) BOW, Curated by Sarah Searson, Limerick City Gallery of Art (2025), Magic and Loss, Kevin Kavanagh, Dublin (2024), Measure for Measure, Art House Laois (2024), Hennessy Craig, Ryan Gallery RHA, Dublin (2024), ANSEO, Art House Laois (2023), Boyle Arts Festival (2023), RHA Annual Exhibition, Dublin (2023), Measure for Measure, Solo Exhibition, Kevin Kavanagh, Dublin (2022), The Pleasure Ground, Rathfarham Castle (2022), SILVER, Kevin Kavanagh, Dublin (2019), Hennessy Craig Award, Shortlisted Group Show, RHA Dublin (2019), Make Haste Slowly, Goeth-Institut Irland, Dublin (2018), Island Life, Kevin Kavanagh, Dublin (2018), Primed Vision, Solo Exhibition, Kevin Kavanagh, Dublin (2018), An Act of Hospitality can only be Poetic, Highlanes Gallery, Drogheda curated by Linda Shevlin and Aoife Ruane (2018).

Stephanie was the recipient of The Hennessy Craig Award (2024) and The Claremorris, Gallery Award, Ballinglen First Biennial (2023), The Fergus Ahearn Award, Boyle Arts Festival (2023) and Individual Arts Bursary, Limerick (2023).