• 'In West Clare' (We are Eternal)

    In my life, I have only toured through Clare twice – once on a teaching assignment at the wonderful Burren School of Art, it was high Spring and wild flowers were a wonder as was the Nivea blue sea. We were blessed with great weather and lovely dips after class. My second visit was during a terrifically stormy season (July!). Puttering around the County Clare coastline after an absence of many years was restorative in all the right ways. We were awash with elements. Incessant rain kept us grounded – but even so, the beauty of the place was undeniable. Sometimes in places like that, on days like that - the ones that take your breath away – I wonder at how I might have missed it – been rained off etc and never known its colour, shapes and texture in that season. The storm added starkness to the landscape, giving more grist to the black of the Burren and a cobalt green to the tide turning on a cliff. And so much frothy white in the sea. I can recall the colours of both excursions with ease. The scenes are still in my senses, I think those moments – the magic ones – are like tattoos on our minds. Eternal in that moment, as are we. Oil On Canvas: 100cm x 80cm In Slip Frame Ready To Hang
  • ‘Tis (All before us)'

    Oil on Canvas,

    180cm x 120cm

    ‘Tis – the west of Ireland abbreviation of ‘it is’ is a term I love to hear. The softness of it fills me with affection.

    ‘Tis was also the title of Frank McCourt’s second memoir. Following on from his best-selling ‘Angela’s Ashes’which portrayed the bleakness of Ireland in the earlier half of the last century.

    While we still enjoy significant rain fall, Ireland of today is vibrant. In spite of challenges economic and social, we are as a people – I feel, forward looking. And our landscape is abundant – it holds and inspires us all.

    ‘Tis’– this painting, is about looking forward. It was made in many, many layers and gave its own set of challenges.  When composing a painting, I am not looking for likeness but sensation – the feeling of coming home or being home. Place is important but not in a  geo map specific way. I am creating sense of place.

    Just as happiness is never  truly a thing but more a feeling. I am endeavouring to evoke that feeling when you round the Irish coastline and the views, as Seamus Heaney so beautifully set the scene in his poem Postscript  “.. catch the heart off guard and blow it open”.

  • Oil on canvas 45cm x 35cm Ready to hang in slip frame The back strand at Lacken in North Mayo is one of the most breath-taking places I have ever been. It's wide and long and surrounded by huge, high dunes. In the early part of the year, a breeze blows directly across the beach creating gentle gusts of sand - it feels otherworldly and a bit magical - as if for a few moments you are suspended between worlds,  neither holding on or letting go.  
  • Oil on canvas 40cm x 40cm Ready to hang in slip frame This painting is another song of praise, an ode to the sea as it renews, invigorates and keeps us buoyant - leading us homewards.
  • A Turn For Grace

    9,650.00

    A Turn For Grace

    I read a headline many years ago titled ‘A stage for the performance of heaven’. The article* discussed how the Calder Valley had been poet Ted Hughes ‘tuning fork’.  I loved the notion of inspiration as a wide open plain. It seemed boundless, yet active.     I have the article pinned above my desk – it feels like a talisman, a reminder to stay in my lane, plough on and stretch out into infinite possibilities.    It seems the sea is both my ‘stage’ and ‘tuning fork’.  it is the place I draw inspiration and it is a deep well. Making this painting was long and challenging. Made in fifty-plus layers of heavy oils, it was my largest sea painting to date, and the process, while (comma) often filled with joy, was at times tumultuous.   Hughes referred to Scout Rock (the view from his childhood home) as ‘"my spiritual midwife at the time, and my godfather ever since".  It is the perfect summation of my relations with the sea – a place of possibility and renewal. I am guided by it. This painting being a case in point. When the going got tough, a little too challenging, a gap seemed to appear in a wave and guide me on to grace. Oil On Canvas: 152cm x 152cm In Slip Frame Ready To Hang
    
    
  • After Nephin

    895.00
    Oil on canvas 46cm x 36cm In slip frame ready to hang Memory plays a huge part in my work. Recalling time and place sensations in all its subjectivity is very much part of the push-pull and play of reconstructing memories. After Nephin was painted following my recent fishing trip with my Dad – it was a glorious time in a wonderful place. Unforgettable really. Yet when I come to paint it – I think mostly of sensations.  Weather rolling in, the boat setting off from the shore and rolling out across the lapping lake. The mountains are there -  and the moody sky  and water - but I think what I am trying to capture is that  precious time which feels like water in our hands.      
  • Oil on canvas 100cm x 70cm Ready to hang in slip frame  
  • At Valentia

    2,550.00
    Oil on canvas 40" x 30" (i.e. 102cm x 76cm) Ready to hang in slip frame I am a fan of islands but despite having spent much of my painting time in Ciarraí, I have only recently started to document Valentia island.  I love the sea-crossing - short as it is - and Bray Head, and the lapping water at ever side. I love too that you can go way, way high up and low down again into the sea. This is one of my first paintings from this place - it was made following a stormy Summers crossing.
  • Oil on canvas 76cm x 51cm Ready to hang in slip frame Mayo has some magic places, DownPatrick Head being a case in point. It's the edge of Ireland and not for the faint-hearted. The sea lashes it for much of the time - making for dramatic sea spray and the foamiest, thundering current but then at other times it is all calm - like at day break when the sun steals its way in silence into the sky. The stormy times are not forgotten, but behind us now as we begin again.  
  • Begin To Hope

    8,750.00
    Oil on canvas 180cm x 120cm In slip frame ready to hang These larger paintings have been stirring inside me for the past few years. It has been a pleasure to see them finally come to fruition in the studio. I am forever saying my work is ‘holding on and letting go’ . There may be more robust, verbose words for my process but the practice of turning up, letting go of all my notions and hang ups and holding on for inspiration, flow and the good stuff (that feels to my mind like fire)  is essentially how I find and harness inspiration. Begin to Hope feels like a line I am making by walking, beyond the fertile void, it is of itself spilling out into the world at large        
  • Oil on canvas 45cm x 35cm Ready to hang in slip frame While on a fellowship at The Ballinglen Arts Foundation at the beginning of this year, I used to walk the shoreline at sunset. Most usually I was alone on the beach with my thoughts and it was a lovely opportunity to exercise my mind and body. It occurred to me  late on one of those evenings how the sea is so soothing - inhaling and exhaling in a rhythm as it does. Funny to get to my age before realising how the sea shows us how to breathe.  
  • Oil on canvas 40" x 30" (i.e. 102cm x 76cm) Ready to hang in slip frame The sea adjoining Ciarraí can often catch colours of the tropics - turquoise and fizzy greens that don't quite match our inky skies. I have been greatly infleunced by Sorolla this past year - visiting his studio in Madrid and seeing his shows in London and Dublin. I wonder how he might have painted our sea - with all the drama but not so much sun, I imagine the Spaniard may have had much to say in paint.
  • Oil on canvas 40cm x 40cm Ready to hang in slip frame There is a motion in the ocean that helps - I think - to move forwards out of 'stuckness' and  onwards. The constancy of the sea and holding on and letting go are a constant theme for me.  
  • Contentment

    645.00
    Oil on canvas 40cm x 40cm Ready to hang in slip frame Another of my happy places! This was painted in my studio but harks back to happy times close to the boglands in Ciarraí. It is, in recent years, a contentment to me to take inspiration out in the landscape before incorporating it into the rhythm of a studio schedule. For a long time, I felt perpetually on residency - out in some landscape or other, it was enchanting but often unsettling. Now a new studio rhythm feels an enhancement, an orderly way to tap into influences and mine memories.    
  • Oil on canvas 25cm x 25cm Ready to hang in slip frame This painting was made in many layers and took me on a bit of a journey. It was inspired by Bic Runga's song - of the same title - Everything is beautiful and new. Listen to it HERE. The song was inspired by Bic's first-time motherhood - the enchantment,  fragility  and wonder of the new. It's appropriate to any journey - that is challenging, a personal stretch but ultimately a happy song.
  • Flume

    ‘Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working’ so said Picasso. I agree – turning up is everything, yet inspiration turns up in many places. Often the oddest of places. For me, Ideas often solidify when walking or in the shower, And always, always in music.  The title for this painting ‘Flume’ came to me organically. While I was painting, the world rolled around my mind – it seemed a hybrid somehow of Flow or Float and Moon. On inspection the definition was of ‘an artificial channel conveying water’ or ‘ a winding tubular water slide or chute at a swimming pool’. Both definitions gave ballast to the sensations of rolling water and a light, playfulness at the edge of a body of water. Beyond the shallows, I remembered the Peter Gabriel song ‘Flume’– it petered up from the recesses of memory.  The lyrics,  “I move in water, shore to shore, Nothing's more.  Only love is all maroon,  Lapping lakes like leary loons’ affirmed the sensations I am trying to capture – the feeling of being ‘all in’ when in water (or life, or love!). Being entirely in your body,  in your own nature but also weightless – feeling in flow, sort of floating. That particular pleasurable illumination - the lightness of being. Oil On Canvas: 125cm x 112cm In Slip Frame Ready To Hang  
  • 'From Valentia' (Above us only Sky)

    I have, for many year, loved to paint on Bolus Head, so much so that I neglected Valentia island for far too long. A break away to Bray Head on a bracing day, or otherwise, is always worth the climb and was fine food for the stew of this painters pot. The view to the Skelligs is spectacular. It seems to me the weather sometimes falls away into the sea. As if it sort of changes its mind half way across from the mainland, somehow getting distracted on its way, the elements causing light to land in the sea. The colours changing in accordance with light and heat, filling the spectrum. From the viewing point it makes for a great stage show, mist, fog and clouds all in the mix of atmospheric textures giving a heavenly vibe. There is so much sky, God can’t be far away Oil On Canvas: 180cm x 120cm In Slip Frame Ready To Hang    
  • Oil on Canvas 61cm x 46cm In slip frame ready to hang This painting might appear a bit maverick in this collection but, as with them all, was painted in response to a time and place. In this case. The time being a VERY hot day in my studio. It began life as a demo (for my Abstracting the Landscape Online painting course) but as the layers progressed I realised it was harking back to a recent landscape I had visited. ‘Heatwave’ was painted at the tail end of the collection and the beginning of my next body of work, so it literally is the shape of things to come.  
  • Oil on canvas 45cm x 35cm Ready to hang in slip frame After many years traveling and living overseas. It is a constant comfort to feel 'at home' in Ireland. It is a place for my heart to rest.  
  • Oil on canvas 56cm x 51cm In slip frame ready to hang My mind gets a bit blown when I think about how the opposite end of the shoreline I am standing in, is washing someone else’s feet on the other side of the world. It is entirely mind-blowing but also enormously reassuring – as if to affirm that everything that lives is connected. The cyclical nature of tides, sun rise – sun set, seasons and the rhythms of our own biology all pre-date time itself and point to an innate knowingness and our  ability to be harmonious – in sync – or at the very least community minded!.    
  • Oil on canvas 25cm x 25cm Ready to hang in slip frame Sometimes the littlest paintings have more than their fair share of magic. This one was painted in about 50 layers and I was just about to give up when it presented itself, like a secret kingdom - just beyond our imagination.
  • Oil on board 30cm x 25cm In slip frame ready to hang Inspired by my recent solstice swim, It was the most beautiful evening on Garretstown strand. The sun cast the most glorious, long shadow but there were very few folks on the beach and scarcely anyone in the sea. Having the sea to myself was intensely pleasurable. Invigorating, it felt like washing off a season – I thought of Van Morrison’s ‘To be Born again’ – and understood the immersion to be a special baptism of sorts. I slept so well that night – dreaming I was cocooned in the arc of a wave.           
  • Island Home

    525.00
    Oil on board 25cm x 20cm In slip frame ready to hang Over the years, I have always felt comfortable living on islands – which is no surprise given our Island home. Reading Tim Winton’s book of the same title brought home (ha!) to me the pure and tender qualities of island life. It frames our life and gives it context (on same and for context Winton’s Island home is Australia!) Most recently, I found myself on small islands in the middle of Lough Mask while fishing with my Dad. At ‘lunchtime’ we moor at one of the small islands  -  the sounds of the shore lapping, bird life, oars on water, reels spinning and yarns being spun by fishermen is a lovely backdrop to memories of that place and time. It is a place I feel very inspired by and at home.      
  • Oil on canvas 40cm x 40cm In slip frame ready to hang It seems a long time ago now, but there was a period when I lived overseas for 15 years. I feel so entrenched in Ireland now – like on a molecular level – I can scarcely fathom all that time apart. Kerry was absolutely fundamental in re-enchanting my connection with home. Feeling utterly ‘at home’ in Ireland has been possibly my greatest delight in life and stems from time spent in Kerry when I first returned. My first residencies were at Cill Rialaig in Ciarraí – I spent much of my first years back in Ireland painting there. It has underpinned my work as an artist and provided a spectacular canvas upon which my life and love of this land has unfolded. I have felt utterly guided every step of the way – there is MASSIVE magic there – a particular kind of Kerry Kismet.     
  • Lands Edge

    3,950.00
    Oil on canvas 140cm x 74cm In slip frame ready to hang This painting typifies much of the push and pull at play in my work and could equally be called ‘Holding On & Letting Go’. It was painted over the course of a year in many layers – this painting and I had something of a long loose dance before we capitulated towards each other.  Lands Edge is to my mind about standing your ground – staying within the magic limitlessness of imagination – and not getting sucked into the nonsensical void.  Out beyond the churning chaos there is magic. You don’t always have to see it – but you must always believe in it, for as Roald Dahl said ‘only those who believe in magic will find it’.      
  • Oil on canvas 40cm x 40cm In slip frame, ready to hang. €795.00
     
  • Oil on canvas 45cm x 35cm Ready to hang in slip frame This collection has felt very much like a bunch of songs of praise to the shoreline and the magic, renewable energy of nature. This was painted after listening to Jack Lukeman's song - Magic Days & Magic Ways - a really lovely, hopeful tune - listen to it HERE.  
  • Mexican Odyssey

    4,950.00
    Mixed media 120cm x 100cm  
  • Oil on canvas 40cm x 40cm In slip frame ready to hang I'm recently returned from a fishing trip with my Dad and our lovely friend John on Lough Mask. While I feel very at home in Partry – the very special village (populated by extra special people) where my Dad has visited annually for fishing for over 50 years. There is something about the stillness and perpetual motion of being in the boat, on the lake – a particular sensation of time and space that can only be explained as my home on the lake.     
  • Nocturne

    9,250.00

    Nocturne

    Inspired by time fishing with my father on the Mayo Lakes, Nocturne is evocative of days ending and that very special light particular to the low sun on the lakes. I am a fair weather fisher but time on the lake with my Dad is nothing short of glorious. It is time out of time. Even though senses are accelerated with the cut and thrust of the boat traversing the waves, sideways rain and all the slip-slop sounds of water, reels and bird life – time feels somehow suspended. The experience is utterly elemental and yet really, very restful but stimulating.  Beyond the shoreline, out on that horizon there is a promise of magic and reward. Great days - time well spent – the best currency – before the waves roll us back to shore and home. Oil On Canvas: 150cm x 150cm In Slip Frame Ready To Hang  
     
  • On The Way Home

    2,240.00
    Oil on canvas 90cm x 60cm In slip frame ready to hang I’m not good at remembering road no’s or indeed mountains names so I fondly refer to the mountains midway between my parents home and mine as  – The In-betweeners!    This painting was completed on a Monday morning following a lovely weekend at my folks. I had been a little ‘stuck’ with the painting but when driving home, across the country from my parents’  house the evening before, the answer was literally staring me in the face. A golden orb, the most glorious sunset guided me home.  It’s more literal than my usual work but I liked it, so I’ve left it!    
  • Oró, Oró

    645.00
    Oil on canvas 45cm x 35cm Ready to hang in slip frame Oró, Oró was painted while on a painting fellowship at The Ballinglen Foundation in North Mayo.  While walking along the shoreline in Ballycastle the tune deeply embedded in every Irish childhood psyche  - 'Oró se do bheatha bhaile' - came free in my mind. It is traditionally a rallying call but always to my mind - conjured up the image of rowing across waves, homewards. It heralded (to me!) a new way of painting, that felt much like being on the crest of a wave with home in sight.  
  • Oil on canvas 100cm x 70cm Ready to hang in slip frame I made this painting while on a painting fellowship at The Ballinglen Artists Foundation in Ballycastle, Co Mayo. Dun Bristé - or the stack - is a tiny landmass just off Downpatrick Head. It’s a sanctuary for birds now but legend has it that the chunk of rock broke away from the mainland when St Patrick struck the earth with his stick in response to a naysayer who doubted his Christian doctrine! Either way it is striking and I love to paint it!

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