My Father's Paintings

I came across an early painting of my father’s in my uncle Joe’s house.  It portrayed a ritual on the land, the family praying in a reimagined landscape of the family farm.  This has prompted a consideration of legacy and practice, also looking at the place of art within homes, within families, and seeing within them a more primal connection to land and place.  Other layers emerge, the sites are often those of rebellion from Boland’s Mill to the family farm to Ben Bulben in Sligo, histories both public and personal emerge.

I began working with my mother on a body of work travelling with her to the friends and family who own his paintings and documenting his work in context.

These show my late father’s paintings where they live within the homes of a now-elderly generation. An inner landscape emerges within the details of their lives around the painting on the wall, their mortality evident.

Series of prints

Re:Group - exhibition Skibbereen Arts Festival, Cork