I began painting full time eleven years ago, I had been very ill and was beginning to feel a little stronger. A friend told me about KCat Art & Study Centre in Callan, and after I signed up, I immediately took up my brushes at home and began to paint every day.

I lean toward pure colour, frayed edges and deeply felt experience. My dreams often provide very important insight, or indeed direct images in the work. I can be provoked by a sentence in a book, an overheard aside, music, a road killed animal, my fears, phobias, idiosyncrasies, hopes, loves. Sadness and fear infiltrate a lot of the work, some people really can’t face it, literally don’t want to see this, which is fine, I’m pretty obstinate, it’s the one thing I know completely, that the truth on canvas is an imperative. My studio and easel are my loving cocoon, my free place, an extension of my mind. I live in a beautiful rural setting, which is soothing and scalding in the realities of weather, life cycles, light and air movement, everything that feeds what I do.

A fellow artist asked me last year about my ‘process’, I was taken aback, but up for the challenge, I told him I’m like a reverse archaeologist, instead of slowly patiently digging for the truth, I am layering, deepening and filling to find the truth, hopefully this doesn’t sound too pompous, but I was very contented with that analysis, and he understood immediately which was heartening.

The unairbrushed truth.