About Me

I paint the places that stay with you long after you've left them.

I was born in Ireland but left as a baby: an early childhood in Zimbabwe, then Durban, South Africa from the age of nine, and back to my roots here in the west of Ireland some sixteen years ago. That double inheritance sits behind everything I make. My eye was trained under an African sun, on heat and saturation and colour that doesn't apologise, before it ever learned the greys and silvers of the west of Ireland. The two have never stopped talking to each other.

Creativity has been the constant. I've painted most of my life and spent my working years in the arts as a secondary school English and Drama teacher, drawing the work out of other people and standing in the wings while they found it. Moving from the performing arts to the visual wasn't a change of direction so much as a change of position: from the wings to the work itself. The making is mine now.

Now I work from Rosewood Studio, behind our cottage in Derrykeel, County Galway, shaped by the wild, elemental landscapes of the Burren and Connemara. The limestone pavements, the Atlantic light, the way the sky changes everything. I paint in oil and cold wax, mostly with a palette knife, building up layers of texture and colour that carry the weight and mood of a place rather than a literal record of it. Abstract impressionism feels like the right language for landscapes that are themselves ancient and layered.

Most of my work falls into two families. The Rockscapes are the limestone country of the Burren through the seasons: the terraces, the turloughs, the gentians pushing up impossibly blue between the stones. The Strandline pieces belong to the Atlantic shore, fish and crabs and the water's edge, painted thick and quick, the way the tide works. I build the surface up in layers until it holds almost as much texture as the landscape itself, which is why I frame the larger pieces unglazed. Texture like that is for looking at, not for putting behind glass.

My still life work comes from the same instinct, finding the extraordinary in the everyday. A bowl of limes. A jug catching the light. Objects that hold a moment.

I paint from feeling first. The finished work is an invitation to look slowly, and to notice what shifts when you do.

I've exhibited in Galway and Durban, and my work is held in collections across four continents.

My paintings are original, one-of-a-kind works, many framed and ready to hang. Prints are available for a selection of pieces, bringing the same spirit into your home at a more accessible price.

If you have a question about a piece, ask me. You're buying directly from the artist, and I'll answer it myself.