2023
Graphite on gessoed found paper
18.5 x 24.5 cm | framed: 27.5 x 32.5 cm (charcoal veneer wood box frame)

Artist Statement
“My drawings depict unpopulated spaces which are infused with a melancholic sense of loss and absence. Following the tradition of Irish artists in exile revisiting their motherland through their art, images connect to the fractured landscapes of my youth during the most turbulent years of the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland in terms of personal and historical memory. A limited colour palette and the tonal possibilities of graphite create a haunting, psychological darkness which plays with a dichotomy of beauty and menace. A sense of tension is continued through the intimacy of scale and a confrontational, single point perspective where the audience is drawn into my world to look and wonder, but ultimately held at a distance from participating in the scene. In a wider context this undercurrent of uneasiness and possible threat evokes the ‘eerie’ and connects to a contemporary ‘Art of the Landscape’ where a disrupted pastoral view of nature is presented to suggest anxiety, crisis and alienation.

Ideas around memory, identity, and the ambiguous nature of home and belonging inform my current series of drawings on found paper. Featuring images of where I grew up in Belfast, these works evoke a partial return to a homeland where a legacy of violence still lingers. Existing fragments of text and maps from pages of archival materials fuse my own personal mythology with other histories and narratives to present unexpected commentaries and reveal subtexts. The resulting unquiet landscapes suggest uncertainty and an ongoing negotiation with the past.”