The Kenny Gallery in Liosbán, Galway, will host an unusual exhibition this Friday, a two-person show entitled ‘Pretty Pictures’ by two County Galway artists, Shane Crotty from Woodford and Dean Kelly originally from Loughrea. Both of these artists have a day job – they work in Kennys.

Shane is a printmaker with a difference; he works in a variety of techniques including digital, monoprint, collograph, drypoint and photography. He mixes contemporary media with drawing and gold leaf. He uses wooden plates which degrade and change quickly while working on them and making editions.

This change is often unpredictable and can produce some fascinating results. His subject matter varies from Auschwitz to Croagh Patrick, from war memorials to religious iconography and from modern society to floral images.

About sentimentality rather than being in themselves sentimental, Dean Kelly’s new collection of paintings and photographs – his contribution to ‘Crotty & Kelly’s Pretty Pictures’ marks a shift in that artist’s work to simpler modes.

Gone is much of the layered graphic, and to the fore is pure painting. As a young painter Alice Maher told Kelly that she could see that he, as she had herself as a young artist, needed to ‘say everything with every single piece’. However she assured him that the affliction of applying an encyclopaedic method eases with time.

So the penny may be dropping ... ‘de-cluttering’ stands to these spontaneous, instinctive, unabashedly local (and not so local) images which, while making you think, still manage to be beautiful.