'Three quarks for Muster Mark!'

She studied philosophy and law but after moving to New York City, Ms McLaughlin trained as an artist at the prestigious Art Student’s League. Last summer, she moved to Dublin, where she maintains a studio near St. Stephen’s Green. Ms. McLaughlin’s work has been shown throughout the United States and Ireland.

The paintings explore energy at the quantum level, in particular, focusing on the elusive elementary particle known as the quark. The quark is poorly understood, but involves energy, colour, and chaos, making it an intriguing starting point.

Recurrent marks in her work evoke various other facets of the quark. Short lines, for example, are inspired by cloud-chamber tracks of particles colliding, coming into and out of existence in nanoseconds. Stripes and patches of colour reflect the discontinuous way in which energy is only observed at discrete quanta.

How quarks actually look will always remain an enigma, due to the limitations of human observation. Even the very meaning of the work “quark,” originally coined by James Joyce in Finnegan’s Wake, is itself a mystery:

Three quarks for Muster Mark!

Sure he hasn’t got much of a bark

And sure any he has it’s all beside the mark. (Finnegan’s Wake).

The exhibition officially opens on Friday 4th June, 6pm at Waterside Theatre, Glendermott Road, Londonderry, Tel: 028-71314000. It runs until 16th July 2010. It’s free and all are welcome to attend!