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SOLD OUT!'The Big Sky' collection was inspired by a residency at The Ballinglen Arts Foundation in North Mayo. During the 6-wk residency, I spent a LOT of time walking by the sea. There is - for me - a conflict between being inside and outside the studio. - I always want to be working. Of course, in this instance walking is working. The constancy of the tides is so calming and invariably that made it's way in to this new, looser work. As did a lightness of touch (and spirit!) also manifested in the pink and peaches of the landscape. It was time well spent: Time in wide open spaces = cardiac care. Oil on Canvas 35cm x 45cm in Slip Frame -
SOLD OUT!Lacken Strand is one of those wide, open spaces that you can't hide from or in. It is, to my mind, one of the most enchanting places on the island of Ireland. In the vastness of the expanse of the scene you really can't escape or hide from the elements. While on retreat at the Ballinglen Artists' Foundation I took daily walks at Lacken. The weather was broody and moody even in mid-Summer. Oftentimes, it felt like four seasons in one walk but even in perpetual motion there is always order in the natural world. Oil on Canvas 45cm x 35cm in Slip Frame -
SOLD OUT!While on residency at The Ballinglen Artists Foundation, I walked a lot on Lacken Strand. In 6-weeks I only ever met 2 other people on the lovely, long strand. During these walks, ideas would percolate - some good, some bad. It's hard to know in the solitude of a retreat if you're on the right track or veering off down (another) blind alley but the constancy of contemplation on these walks helped to refine the body of work that is 'The Big Sky' . Most times on these walks I would document those thoughts in a notebook and it is these ramblings - thoughts and tangents - that underpin this love letter to the world from Lacken. Oil on Canvas 45cm x 35cm in Slip Frame -
SOLD OUT!Oil on Board 35cm x 30cm In slip frame ready to hang -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 40cm x 30cm In slip frame, ready to hang. €595.00 -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 40cm x 30cm In slip frame, ready to hang. €595.00 -
SOLD OUT!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. -
SOLD OUT!Painted during a time of change and in response to days spent in solitude on the shoreline. Looking out to sea and documenting it in layers felt like a meditation – a sort of roadmap in to serenity. As an island nation, I think we can be less than cognisant of the dramatic impact the sea and its proximity has on us and our lives. Taking time to really look and allow ourselves to ‘be’ all at sea is for me, invigorating, life enhancing and often life-affirming. Oil on canvas 45cm x 35cm Ready to hang in slip frame SOLD -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 40cm x 40cm Ready to hang in slip frame -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 40cm x 40cm SOLD From my ‘Storm after the Calm’ collection, ‘Love like a landslide’ is an ode to love, life and the landscape. I feel so lucky to get to work in, and be inspired by the landscape. Some days it’s like starting again, I see a view and am ‘floored’ by it, as if for the first time. I think love and life are like that too – magic and utterly remarkable if we take time to really look at or think about it -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 40cm x 40cm Ready to hang in slip frame -
SOLD OUT!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. -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 45cm x 35cm Ready to hang in slip frame I am not a strong swimmer (and a terrible surfer!) but anyhow - I love to do both - there is a feeling being in or on the sea that thrills and renews me at a cellular level. It is one of my favourite happy places! -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 45cm x 35cm Ready to hang in slip frame I was lucky to spend many of my childhood Summers in Wexford. This past Summer I spent a lovely week in Rosslare and was delighted to note the magic is still as magnificent when walking at low tide on moon lit nights. -
SOLD OUT!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. -
SOLD OUT!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. -
SOLD OUT!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. -
SOLD OUT!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. -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 40cm x 40cm Ready to hang in slip frame I was fortunate to walk some of the Camino de Santiago trail earlier this year. It was wonderful - lovely clear seascapes and plenty of sunny times. I think I brought back some of the blue with me as it magic-ed it's way into my work for some time afterwards. As did this determined figure - a pilgrim who seemed to forge forward in faith - sure of just rewards. -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 40cm x 40cm Ready to hang in slip frame Suaimhneas is the Irish word for tranquility or relaxation - to be at peace. In recent times it has come to be associated with mindfulness and being aware of ones surroundings. Eitherway, being tranquil or mindful - the sea is always a balm to me. **Now Available As A Limited Edition Print HERE** -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 40cm x 40cm Ready to hang in slip frame There is a moody, broodiness to the Mayo landscape - sometimes one can feel almost between worlds. I have heard it said 'the veil is thin' there - as if our ancestors are close by. I take this to be a comfort, and maybe a guiding hand that leads me and my work onwards. -
SOLD OUT!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. -
SOLD OUT!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. -
SOLD OUT!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. -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 40cm x 40cm Ready to hang in slip frame Some paintings make themselves. This ones was made on a painting fellowship at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation and seemed to bring my work onwards - in a sure way, forwards - towards new paintings I wanted to make. Which is just as well as the felt the path behind had fallen away. -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 40cm x 40cm Ready to hang in slip frame As an Irish landscape painter, I have great reverence towards (and am inspired by) our great history in the field. As islanders, the Sea is a constant theme in Irish art - we are steeped in it - literally and figuratively. It is very much a part of us. It is important to me to reference the Sean Nós (The Old Ways) while progressing my own work and I felt this painting went someway to creating an accommodation between both. -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 45cm x 35cm In slip frame, ready to hang. €745.00 I have been fortunate to undertake many artist residencies. It's a period of time - for me, it's been anything from a week to three months - most usually spent in solitude, contemplating new work quietly. The kind of time most parents would sell their teeth for! The quiet gets intense in the beginning - thoughts of being an utter fraud with a wasted life, devoid of any talent get noisy - and days and nights are long. I believe - wholeheartedly - if you are to make your own unique work, you must hear your own unique thoughts - warts and all - thus, there is nothing for it but to turn off your phone, walk in all weather and face forward the maelstrom of the mind. Slowly, fresh grounds of a new idea, germs of connectedness with nature shoot surely - and an enchantedness with the work begins again. Soon the silence that was solitary is now a balm - your thoughts and indeed your place on the earth seem to rhyme - or at least have a co-herence - a rhythm! It's then, in that super sweet spot, I have my best shots of inspiration - sometimes it seems a simple download, a hymn to the silence. -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 36cm x 47cm In slip frame, ready to hang. €745.00 One the first things I did post-lockdown (V1.0) was to got to the sea and swim. I had missed the sea and a full body immersion (while baltic!) was invigorating and restorative. I am a fair-weather swimmer but have a notion of a dry robe, flask and those flipper-bootie-thingies - I love the communion of it and the connection to both the elements and ones own innate vitality. Even if I don't always brave beyond the shore, everything is significantly better when I Sea through Blue! -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 36cm x 47cm In slip frame, ready to hang. €745.00 The Covid quiet time was an interesting time to be painting about Spike Island. Pausing our own lives and regular routines gave rise to questions about why we do what we do and how we are spending our time / lives. It felt often, as if we were all sent to our rooms to examine our collective conscience! After the initial terror, I - and almost everyone I know - was grateful for the silence but that relief soon became a resolve to do things better when we were back to 'normal'. In many ways it felt as if I was primed to restart - almost evangelical - as inhabitants of Spike Island must have felt upon their re-emergence to civilisation - as if A Dweller on the Threshold -'tis ALL before us. -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 36cm x 47cm In slip frame, ready to hang. €745.00 It is said there are no lines in nature - and yet - the tide lines on the shoreline mark the sea's inhalations and exhalations. If ever I need to settle my mind, I take it down to the sea where the tides eases my freeflow and scattered thoughts - soon my breath keeps time with the tide and my thoughts harmonize - or dissipate. Perhaps it is more true to say there are no straight lines in nature - as in life. -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 40cm x 40cm In slip frame, ready to hang. €745.00 While making 'The Idea of an Island', I became familiar with the work of late Mayo musician Conor Walsh. His work is splendid. Sadly his album The Lucid was only released post-humorously - following Conor's sudden death. I listened to The Lucid a lot while making this collection and called this painting after Conor to some how honor his contribution. The Irish Times review described the album as "a victory for his music and a partial triumph over death itself". I'd strongly recommend a listen to it HERE. I have included the track on a Spotify playlist of music I listened to while making this collection in solitude. You can hear the full playlist HERE. -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 40cm x 40cm In slip frame, ready to hang. When painting in response to Spike Island, I thought often (almost obsessively) about how it must have felt to be captive - as opposed to captivated on / by the island. Inhabitants - be they monks or prisoners - must have looked at the sea and the far shore - with longing. I imagine imprisonment is difficult at any time but to have civilian life literally in your sites must have been extra challenging. I imagine their proximity to the shoreline, gave island inhabitants endless estuaries in to which their minds could wander - satisfying and nourishing their longing for liberty and home. -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 40cm x 40cm In slip frame, ready to hang. €745.00During my final year in secondary school, I had, for a brief period of time, a substitute English teacher. I remember this woman for many reasons but principally because of here peculiar analogies. She told us we should always remember that a good story was like a fish with its tail in its mouth!In the decades that has swooshed past since I left school, I have forgotten a LOT but I could never shake that analogy! And so here I am at the end of one collection facing towards the next one. Starting Over feels like a culmination but also a beginning of the shape of things to come in my future work, beyond the precipice. -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 40cm x 40cm In slip frame, ready to hang. €795.00 -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 40cm x 40cm In slip frame, ready to hang. €795.00 -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 45cm x 35cm In slip frame, ready to hang. €795.00 -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 40cm x 40cm In slip frame, ready to hang. €795.00 -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 40cm x 40cm In slip frame, ready to hang. €795.00 -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 45cm x 35cm In slip frame, ready to hang. €795.00 -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 40cm x 40cm In slip frame, ready to hang. €795.00 -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 40cm x 40cm In slip frame, ready to hang. €795.00 -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 50cm x 40cm In slip frame, ready to hang. €845.00 -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 50cm x 40cm In slip frame, ready to hang. €845.00 -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 50cm x 40cm In slip frame, ready to hang. €845.00 -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 50cm x 40cm In slip frame, ready to hang. €845.00 -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 50cm x 40cm In slip frame, ready to hang. €845.00 -
SOLD OUT!Oil on canvas 50cm x 40cm In slip frame, ready to hang. €845.00 -
SOLD OUT!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. -
SOLD OUT!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.
Contemporary Irish Landscape Painting
