What comes next?

Balancing work, family and the art is always a challenge. However, I am really excited by my new project PAX, which fuses my interest in our impact on the planet, on our desire but inability to achieve peace and a range of others aspects. The project will look at how my feelings can be portrayed in much more powerful formats, than simply words. I expect to work with the old, the new, the dangerous and the safe to do what so much good art does and really drive change in perceptions, while delivering a sense of awe too.

What have been your art world triumphs?

I have had a lot outside of art. But the most recent museum level exhibition in a great space, at the Limerick City of Gallery of Art, we as a real boost. It has been a tough few years balancing all the “to-do’s” so it was great to “be back” to art. Before that there has been the time in Iceland, and further back in time the residency and exhibition at the Lapua Art Museum, in Finland. Now, I want to have my work seen more and spread beyond Ireland.

What have been your inspirations?

I am drawn to what endures and what disappears, the sea shifting under weather, the stillness before a storm, the marks birds make against the sky, the majestic glacier eons in the making and so on. My inspiration isn’t a place but a state of attention. I begin with memory, with silence, and let the mind guided hand find its way through it. What drives me is the moment when something felt, consciously or unconsciously becomes form. So the processes we drive here on the planet and which our environment has created fascinate me. The specifics change but the yearning does not.

How has your art developed?

My work has grown steadily more confident and physical over the years. From a young age I created fine renditions of specific things, such as horses, but professionally I began with detailed charcoal drawings and smaller canvases, exploring how light and movement could shape a scene. Gradually the works became often larger, certainly more textured, and more experimental. I now often build up surfaces with thick paint and even curved sheets of lead, giving some works a strong, almost sculptural presence. What’s remained is constant focus on feel, memory, and atmosphere, with colours being more muted over time. I also now stretch more into other media to find a resonance that more traditional approaches cannot deliver and yet all my work has held the concept, the thought behind my work to be king.