I am an Irish artist working predominantly in paint, and also in photography. My practice is rooted in a farming context: I grew up on a small mixed farm in the 1960’s and have run my own farm for the past 25 years. I also spent six years working on agricultural programmes in East/Horn of Africa, mainly supporting access to water resources and food production. These experiences have informed my perspective and my awareness of the interconnections and the inequalities across time and space between people, systems and resources.

Recent work is concerned with how land is used, shaped, remembered and sustained, and with the ways these relationships can be reimagined in painting. I work with abstracted imagery and symbols drawn from the rural landscape, heritage and social history of the West of Ireland, using a palette of earth colours. Recurring motifs and marks in the work, such as reeks, mounds, cairns, dots, lines, grids and crosses, refer to features in the local landscape such as hills, cairns, and crop production and storage methods. But these traditional forms also have wider cultural resonance, as similar geological formations, crop management systems, and funerary rites recur across different cultures and geographies. In my paintings, the surface becomes a site where observation, memory, and abstraction combine to help shape meaning.

Ag cur fátaí |Planting potatoes, 2025, oil on canvas, 24 x 30