• A Turn For Grace

    9,650.00

    A Turn For Grace

    I read a headline many years ago titled ‘A stage for the performance of heaven’. The article* discussed how the Calder Valley had been poet Ted Hughes ‘tuning fork’.  I loved the notion of inspiration as a wide open plain. It seemed boundless, yet active.     I have the article pinned above my desk – it feels like a talisman, a reminder to stay in my lane, plough on and stretch out into infinite possibilities.    It seems the sea is both my ‘stage’ and ‘tuning fork’.  it is the place I draw inspiration and it is a deep well. Making this painting was long and challenging. Made in fifty-plus layers of heavy oils, it was my largest sea painting to date, and the process, while (comma) often filled with joy, was at times tumultuous.   Hughes referred to Scout Rock (the view from his childhood home) as ‘"my spiritual midwife at the time, and my godfather ever since".  It is the perfect summation of my relations with the sea – a place of possibility and renewal. I am guided by it. This painting being a case in point. When the going got tough, a little too challenging, a gap seemed to appear in a wave and guide me on to grace. Oil On Canvas: 152cm x 152cm In Slip Frame Ready To Hang
    
    
  • Begin To Hope

    8,750.00
    Oil on canvas 180cm x 120cm In slip frame ready to hang These larger paintings have been stirring inside me for the past few years. It has been a pleasure to see them finally come to fruition in the studio. I am forever saying my work is ‘holding on and letting go’ . There may be more robust, verbose words for my process but the practice of turning up, letting go of all my notions and hang ups and holding on for inspiration, flow and the good stuff (that feels to my mind like fire)  is essentially how I find and harness inspiration. Begin to Hope feels like a line I am making by walking, beyond the fertile void, it is of itself spilling out into the world at large        
  • Oil on canvas 56cm x 51cm In slip frame ready to hang My mind gets a bit blown when I think about how the opposite end of the shoreline I am standing in, is washing someone else’s feet on the other side of the world. It is entirely mind-blowing but also enormously reassuring – as if to affirm that everything that lives is connected. The cyclical nature of tides, sun rise – sun set, seasons and the rhythms of our own biology all pre-date time itself and point to an innate knowingness and our  ability to be harmonious – in sync – or at the very least community minded!.    
  • Lands Edge

    3,950.00
    Oil on canvas 140cm x 74cm In slip frame ready to hang This painting typifies much of the push and pull at play in my work and could equally be called ‘Holding On & Letting Go’. It was painted over the course of a year in many layers – this painting and I had something of a long loose dance before we capitulated towards each other.  Lands Edge is to my mind about standing your ground – staying within the magic limitlessness of imagination – and not getting sucked into the nonsensical void.  Out beyond the churning chaos there is magic. You don’t always have to see it – but you must always believe in it, for as Roald Dahl said ‘only those who believe in magic will find it’.      
  • Oil on canvas 40cm x 40cm In slip frame, ready to hang. €795.00
     
  • Mexican Odyssey

    4,950.00
    Mixed media 120cm x 100cm  
  • 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.     
  • Nocturne

    9,250.00

    Nocturne

    Inspired by time fishing with my father on the Mayo Lakes, Nocturne is evocative of days ending and that very special light particular to the low sun on the lakes. I am a fair weather fisher but time on the lake with my Dad is nothing short of glorious. It is time out of time. Even though senses are accelerated with the cut and thrust of the boat traversing the waves, sideways rain and all the slip-slop sounds of water, reels and bird life – time feels somehow suspended. The experience is utterly elemental and yet really, very restful but stimulating.  Beyond the shoreline, out on that horizon there is a promise of magic and reward. Great days - time well spent – the best currency – before the waves roll us back to shore and home. Oil On Canvas: 150cm x 150cm In Slip Frame Ready To Hang  
     
  • Sea Change

    895.00
    Oil on canvas 40cm x 40cm In slip frame ready to hang Sometimes we feel 'all at sea' and sometimes it's time for a sea change and then other times - most times - it seems that we are on the other side of change. I believe in, and love perpetual motion. So it's no surprise that this is one of my favourite poems and I think it goes some way to capturing the tone of this painting.

    Oceans

    by Juan Ramon Jimenez

     I have a feeling that my boat

    has struck, down there in the depths, against a great thing. And nothing happens! Nothing...Silence...Waves...--Nothing happens? Or has everything happened, and are we standing now, quietly, in the new life?
  • Oil on canvas 50cm x 40cm In slip frame, ready to hang. €845.00
     
  • Swansong

    My Dad Mick has fished the Mayo Lakes – Lough Mask & Lough Carra every May in tandem with the emergence of the May Fly. Some years more prolifically than others but it is always a place of joy for him. By proxy, genes or otherwise, his joy has become mine and I love to join him on these expeditions which then seep into my own work.  Before Covid we celebrated his 50th year fishing in his home from home, Partry – the lovely village nestled between both lakes. We had a hooley -  a wonderful celebration of time well spent amongst great lifelong friends.  Then nothing! The Covid pause put paid to that particular pleasure and we had to wait it out for years. My Dad had back surgery and was slower on his pins but his lovely essence and energy was buoyed by fast horses and slow golf.  It was glorious to finally return to Lough Mask. I doubted my Dad would be robust enough for long lake days. It was an illumination to see the vitality of place, people and nature infuse him. It energized him entirely. He was ginger-ish boarding the boat the first day but jumping off by the end of the week, exuberant!  Doing what you love really, truly is a lifeforce and nature is magic Oil On Canvas: 160cm x 160cm In Slip Frame Ready To Hang  
  • Oil on canvas 50cm x 40cm In slip frame, ready to hang. €845.00
     
  • Oil on canvas 50cm x 40cm In slip frame ready to hang There is a softness to this painting that belies its layers. Oftentimes those paintings that seem most resolved, take the longest to make. It is not unlike life. I find, as most people do – when I am a bit stirred up or bothered by something a walk on the beach is the cure. The expanse of space, salt between my toes, the spray of salt water on my feet and the rhythmic breath of the tide puts whatever is bothering me into proportion. It's as if a type of tidal tenderness puts a balm on my tender places.    
  • Tidal Sensations

    1,295.00
    Oil on canvas 60cm x 60cm In slip frame ready to hang

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