Artist Statement
My practice is invested in elevating the recognition of contemporary social struggles by depicting their key moments and images through traditional oil painting. My education has been in the European tradition that has, even until now, been an almost exclusively male and privileged group. I enter the art historical conversation with a fresh voice—responding to the Masters of the past while incorporating present concerns. The artists in my field that have strongly informed my work have been Caravaggio, Goya, Corbert and Gericault. My technique works the canvas from dark to light in a thick, sculptural impasto. The scale of my paintings is often large to give weight to the image and create a physical relationship with the body of the viewer. The human figure appears prominently in my work as the connective site to the environment and social movements. I combine political activism with a studio art practice and a street art practice.. I memorialize people who tend to get lost in our media frenzy world—people like the immigrants aboard the ship bound for ” Lampedusa” or the nameless individuals of Occupy Wall Street. I create documents of their contributions and spirit in order to preserve their lives and deeds for the future. I have a continuing fascination with what it might mean to be human at this point history—how we cope with life’s major questions while societal structures and belief systems are shifting Most of all, it is with my commitment to beauty that I want to mark our generation and inspire people’s hearts and minds.
Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer/searching for the God Particle is 72 x 108 inches and celebrates the unbridled human spirit of exploration and the great quest to understand the mystery of all creation. In this painting which also has a silver base, we see engineers building the AMS in a small room. The lightest part of the painting is the roof, alluding to the heavens where the machine is destined for. I would have imagined the creation of the AMS to happen in an ultra hi tech room but the structures around it are very basic beams of wood and relate to images I have seen of Religious early renaissance paintings. It is ultimately a very human endeavor.
I grew up in Ireland, a country wrecked by conflict and it has left an immense impression on me as an artist. The peace keepers are often the soft and ignored voices whose moral courage we remember as true lights in the darkness. The "Ukraine priest painting " is in honour of peacekeepers , the Ukrainian priests who despite the Ukraine's government threat to ban prayer services at the Ukraine protests risked their lives to pray for peace. I found their action to be incredibly profound. On a visual level I love working with the deep blacks and white snow and breaking up the picture plane with the incredible elaborate icons which contrast strongly with the free quality of the surrounding paint work. There is an incredible poise in the priest figures themselves as they hold their icons and hold on to Peace in the no- mans land space between protestors and Police.
"The Waters" is from a series of paintings that I have made about the environment. The work relates to our connection with water . At the bottom of the painting there are figures in the sea, there bodies are surrounded by water and they become almost one with the sea. The painting is worked up with washes reflecting the effects of water falling on the surface. The colours are warm fleshy tones reminding us of our shared life force and incorporating the tension between control and letting go.