DANA WINDER
Irish Landscape Artist
Dana Winder is one of Ireland’s very special Irish landscape artists, known for her plein air oil paintings. Her paintings focus on the landscape, native trees, wildflowers, and the changing skies of County Kerry, where she both lives and works.
Painting Process and Technique: Dana likes to paint outdoors on location to accurately capture the colours of the landscape. She returns to these locations and works on her paintings over multiple sessions. Sometimes refining these works later in the studio. This two-stage process allows her to observe the landscape closely and respond to it with layered surfaces and thoughtful composition. As a result, her work captures more than a scene—it conveys a deep sense of presence, atmosphere, and mood.
Rather than striving for precise representation, her work is imaginative, using colour and brushwork to evoke the mood and atmosphere of a place.
Working mainly in oil on linen, Dana prepares her canvas with a transparent primers. This choice allows the natural tone and texture of the linen to become part of the final composition. She applies paint using both palette knives and brushes, building surfaces rich in texture and detail. Furthermore, she mixes her colour palette from primary pigments, creating subtle, harmonious tones. Occasionally, she employs a single “mother colour” to unify the work.
Place among Irish Landscape Artists
Dana’s practice sits firmly within the tradition of Irish landscape artists. However, she brings a contemporary perspective, grounded in direct observation and daily engagement with the land around her.
Scenes near her home in Castlecove, County Kerry, feature prominently in her Irish landscape paintings. Over the years, Dana has focused her artistic attention on conveying the spirit of Kerry’s natural environment. Her plein air paintings reflect an ongoing relationship with the landscape, it’s plants and how they are affected by the elements and seasonal changes. Winder’s landscape and garden paintings portray the beauty of Ireland and Co Kerry in particular and her personal connection to these places.
Scenes from near Dana Winder’s home in Castlecove, County Kerry feature prominently in her work. The dramatic West of Ireland landscape—rugged mountains with purple slate, an ever-changing Atlantic coastline that shifts from wild and stormy to calm and still, expansive boglands rich in plants and native trees—offers a constant source of inspiration.
Dana is one of today’s leading contemporary Irish landscape artists, with her unique style of painting that echoes the mood of the Irish landscape and it’s changes through the seasons.
Examples of her plein air work can be viewed in the Gallery.
Paintings of Ireland
Landscapes Painted on location in Ireland
