My work depicts twilight skies, fireweed growing amongst wrapped bales, a disused milking parlour, fields, puddles, various types of trees, all images that are silhouetted against the late evening light. This body of work acts as an investigation of the human experience in relation to the land. Equipped with a phone camera, I capture and record what I encounter on my frequent evening walks around the farm and surrounding countryside where I grew up. I have taken my own path through this familiar landscape, fondly responding in my own way, observed through my eyes and life experience. Through a process of analysis in the studio, selected photographs were transformed into oil paintings. The recurring subject of the evening sky signifies transformation in my work. I am particularly fascinated by its myriad of colours and patterns and the otherworldly atmosphere that it creates amongst the farm buildings and surrounding countryside. Inspired by these rural landscapes, the calm of dusk, and celestial events, which on first viewing appear as romanticised yet eerie representations of rural Ireland, delve into the interconnection of memory and the landscape. Themes of the bittersweet inevitability of change that occurs with time, and the feelings of nostalgia, grief, and loss that come and go through life’s chapters, conveying narratives of both melancholy and hope are explored through this imagery.
