In Absentia

The painting reflects the changing relationship beween man and world. It testified to the existential questions.


Tabula rasa

857 plastic bags, 140 x 40cm, 2021

This piece was made during the height of the pandemic and in the aftermath of the devastating Australian bushfires in 2019/2020. It was hard not to adopt an apocalyptic mindset, it still is, yet when chaos integrates itself into the everyday, I find piece knowing my existence is but a fleeting moment on an infinite timeline. 

As one concerned with loss and extinction I can only relinquish to the thought that this is nature, I am , my thoughts are , my smartphone is, just as plastic is too. Does life cease to exist when I do? No, of course we know that, it simply passes by. Just the same as nature, it never ceases. There is no doubt that plastic will become and perhaps already is a time stamp on earths geology, a slither of time buried beneath infinite saplings.

Momentum

Part of the installation called "Practices in sadness".
I try to sum up the experiences of mental struggles and self-isolation with artistic work. Not to be confused with art therapy.

Frosting

Now is not the time 

SOCIAL DISTANCE / 2020
BRONZE /
SIZE / 30CM

Ganz aktuell, aber auch wieder zeitlos. Ähnlich wie bei No Exit.
Ich grenze mich ab, bin nachdenklich, konzentriert und isoliert.
Was kommt?....

Very current, but also timeless again. Similar to No Exit.
I set myself apart, I am thoughtful, focused and isolated.
What's coming?....



Social Distance

A literally surreal take on life under lockdown, how staying at home for months on end has made me feel like a suburban housewife as I anxiously watch the world go by via electronic screens. But both I and my alter ego hold on to hope for the future via a single red rose. From a series of pandemic postcard studies. Collage on panel, 10 x 15 cm

Should I Believe That I’ve Been Stricken?

Watercolor on cold pressed gsm 300, 28 in x 20, 2021

I see my work as an intersection of ecology, femininity and spirituality.  My body of work explores the connection of society’s view of femininity and the mirrored way we treat our earth. My paintings imagine what the reversal of this might look like.  

I want to portray femininity without restriction, a femininity from the female gaze.  From a young age women are taught to evaluate ourselves from the other’s perspective, rather than grounding in how we feel within our bodies. I want to create pieces that originate within this sense of grounding, in order to reconnect with our inner selves, and experiencing a sense of homecoming to our bodies as our primal home.  I hope to reclaim and celebrate the female form from the female perspective, in all of it’s varieties and shapes, as inherently luxurious, spacious, and unique.    

I use my own photography or photos that women share with me, and manipulating scale as a method to cultivate possibility in the viewer’s imagination. Portraying our soft mammal bodies in unusual natural elements, I aim to highlight our physical belonging on this planet.  As humans our natural habitats are wild places, which are rapidly diminishing. I hope to create work that portrays humans as being part of the ecosystem, to show that not only do we need to preserve the natural world for the sake of animals, but also for ourselves in order to be fully human and integrated.  Pushing back against anthropocentrism, my paintings explore how to inhabit this earth with greater consciousness and humility.  

My work is a declaration of coming home to yourself, reclaiming your bodies and this earth as home, and to participate in preserving our abundant and diverse habitats. 



Murex Rosa

"We all live in a world strikingly similar to the original, in which everything is duplicated according to a script – Simulacrum" said Jean Baudrillard. To live in this world, people do not have to look at each other; why if we have screens? Do not have to touch each other, if we have mannequins in shop windows. People do not walk anymore, but instead make a recurrent jog, bringing the physiology in line with what the advertising brochure told them about.  If Baudrillard is right, then we are made up of Simulacrum and without realising it we are becoming a copy of the "perfect human" from the advertisement. This should give our lives a sense and elevate us in the eyes of others.

MEME 0110

Cetge toile est un souvenir, une vision de beauté me restant après une crise d'épilepsie.
J'avais l'impression de mourir et je vivais intensément ce moment dans l stase des merveilles.

The wonder stasis

A young boy looks bashfully at the viewer, wielding a plastic toy gun with both hands. Superimposed on the image is the schematic of an actual revolver. The title of the piece, "Where have all the Fathers gone?", alludes to the lack of adult role models who might aid him in reaching adulthood, setting aside his toys for adult instruments. The fact that the instrument in question if a weapon raises the issue of whether this is a male adulthood that the boy should be pursuing. 

2010
Acrylic and solvent transfer on canvas
70 x 77cms


Where have all the Fathers gone? 3

These collages of physically manipulated landscapes are inspired by the excessive amount of travel ads and digital imagery - We don't know what is real anymore, and what isn't.

Transition

Collection of 9 oil paintings on panel, each 3.5 x 5 inches. Each image sourced from a family zoom call.

2020

Zoom Call on my 21st Birthday

Slipcast stoneware, glaze and luster, 9,5x11x6 inches, 2021

Amphora (Purex)

Flexur, tempera, oil and acrylic on cotton canvas, 210x135cm, 2020

Flexur

Of Beyond and Of After, 2019
mixed media on Tyvek
Size (h w d): 51 x 27 x 11 in

Of Beyond and Of After

every saturday the child must go, removed from one life and placed into another. a forced relationship and a feigned connection.

there are only trees here: the bleak forested landscapes of the housing estates they walked, the only witnesses to this time.
no recreation and minimal effort.

the rest of the week, living as someone else. someone longing for another’s name. a welcome relationship and true connection. the one eventually chosen.

for years, using hands to make sense of what happened. talking and making, attempting to heal, attempting to understand. the link between craft and catharsis grew deeply ingrained and entangled roots.

and then one day, a conversation. the abscission, the severance. just like that, leaving one life behind, but forever haunted.


Every Saturday (1993-present)
The work to date looks at the relationship I had with my biological father, in light of the discovery that I have two Birth Certificates on file in the Irish Civil Registry System.

Using ephemera from the landscapes where we spent time together, on court ordered Saturdays for the first ten years of my life, I create new documents and assemblages which demonstrate the desire to regain control; over my own sense of self, and over a time when I felt I had none. This childlike crafting reflects cathartic processes introduced to me from an early age through therapy and counselling, processes of working through trauma by creating and making.

Along with this, I have revisited my family archive. In these documents, the other half of my life is recorded. My family and I. My mother and I. My Dad and I. While this archive is completely devoid of any trace of my biological father’s physical presence, and my own memory incapable of recalling his form, I have unearthed visual clues and triggers in the photographs which allude to his haunting presence in my life. Through this reflective process of revisiting and re-appropriating both photographs and documents, I weave a narrative that finally speaks for this little girl, my younger self, who was desperate to align herself with one identity, one family, and one Dad.

Despite being born out of what has felt like unresolved trauma and a sense of conflicting identities, the project has in many ways become a celebration. Not only of my own personal resilience in the face of my experiences but also of the Dad I chose and the love he had for me which has never faltered.

Every Saturday

photograph of installation piece, 2020, Stöðvarfjörður, Iceland

IT'S ALL FOR YOU

Unity is a 45x60cm acrylic painting.

​The '36 Series' is an ongoing painted exploration into a geometric grid of 36, which are varying in both size and material. The series examines the idea of 'Lusus Naturae/Sport' within the realms of geometry. Each possible outcome is explored within the grid until one emerges as unique and becomes a part of the series.

Unity

In 1961, in the small Spanish village of San Sebastian de Garabandal, four young girls had an apparition of the Virgin Mary. They entered a state of ecstasy in which they became completely unaware of their surroundings and sensory perceptions. Reportedly, witnesses would pinch the girls, pierce their skin with needles, lift them up and drop them onto rough rocks, and yet they remained entranced. The light and presence of the Virgin is all they claim to have experienced. Twenty years later, in the town of Medjugorje, Bosnia & Herzegovina, six children also had simultaneous visions of the Virgin, with similar ecstatic qualities. 

‘Noema’ represents my search for the presence of the Virgin Mary in these two locations.

Add

Artists

Opportunities

For Artists

ArtConnect

Support