creative process

Snakes and Flames

Snakes and Flames

When flames and snakes are your neighbours, they can't help but be part of the story. This rough, heavy-duty cotton canvas has been in my studio for probably eight years. It was unprimed, so I spent months applying thin layers of oil paint before it went anywhere. I like the dryness that comes from all that soakage and the roughness of the surface. There were wildfires near the sea, and you could see the glow of orange at night in the distance. I was grappling with a shape similar to the one I am painting here back in Ireland. I tried it again when I got to Italy, but it wasn't until I saw the shape as a flame that it unlocked itself. On some of the smaller landscapes, these flames appeared …

The First 30 Minutes

The First 30 Minutes

Painting in the winter morning sunlight feels fresh, and I am surprised at how much I am getting into this set of canvases. They are all the same size but have different textured linen. Some are raw linen and soak up everything, giving the effect of a chalk pastel. Others are stretched with this fine portrait linen which makes the paint giddy with the fluidity of movement. These paintings have an inherent memory of places and backgrounds. They might grow up to be…

A Landscape You Owned

A Landscape You Owned

I have no idea what the green shape is or where it came from, but there is a real calmness to it as it watches over the other shapes play. Many of these shapes start as drawings and eventually jump into the oil paintings. I remember that red line shell-like shape in the left-hand corner from a drawing I did on one of the silkscreens from Berlin. The dark sculpture shape in the top right-hand corner was in a series of ink drawings that I later tore up. It conjures up a ceramic, almost …

A Thousand and One Nighttimes

A Thousand and One Nighttimes

I started this painting by drawing sculpture shapes into a large canvas. I was enjoying myself, and it soon became quite busy. I used a light blue wash to tone it down, but I wanted the drawn elements to be visible underneath. The overall effect was that the painting took on the sense of a stone, so I added the large abstract flowers to bring back some life. Then I began to paint in earnest. At first, randomly, then instinctively. At this stage, I put the canvas …

Acrobats and Flowers

Acrobats and Flowers

This is the journey of “Acrobats and Flowers”, one of the oil paintings in my solo show currently on view at John Martin Gallery in London. I got really into painting these black linear shapes on a red canvas but ended up painting over it in the end. It gave me the idea of painting vertical lines as a central feature, and this is the canvas that absorbed …