Thoughts on Painting and Art
I m delighted to announce the official launch of my Artist Mentorship Programme, which has been running informally in my Arklow studio for over a year, and which I d now like to make more widely available. My mentorship programme is for young artists who wish to study intensively with me in Ireland. Students get to live
Here s a talk about my work I gave at the Lexicon Cultural Centre in Dún Laoghaire on April 11th 2026. Thanks to Paula O Riordan and Artist Network DLR for hosting me!
St Patrick, Ireland s national saint, is often depicted banishing snakes from the country, as he did according to legend. Ireland has no native snake species but this is probably due less to Saint Patrick than to Ireland s isolation after the last Ice Age. Today, a globalised Ireland has plenty of snakes with many kept as
This project has been a labour of love for me so I m delighted to report that on Friday 16th of January 2026 the first Arklow Young Artist of the Year competition was held at Arklow Arts Centre, displaying work by hundreds of the town s Junior School children. Renowned author and children s illustrator PJ Lynch judged the
On April 12th my solo show, Experiments with Reality , opened at the Hamilton Gallery in Sligo with Susan O Keefe, Director of the Yeats Society doing the honours, speaking briefly and leading a Q A session with me about the work. The Hamilton Gallery is a beautiful art space in the heart of Sligo town, run by
When studying painting in Italy in my twenties, my home was an attic room in a convent run by Irish nuns. The convent was called San Girolamo (or Saint Jerome) and images and statues of the saint were everywhere. He also appeared in churches and museums round about, and I became fascinated with his depiction
On 12 September 2024 my SATURNALIA exhibition finally opened at Galerie FeinArt Berlin. Originally scheduled for November 2023, it had to be postponed at short notice because of flooding. Second time round (forgetting my passport!) I missed my flight and almost missed my own opening! But I got there in the end, and all the
Scientists are working on artificial wombs that will allow infants to develop entirely outside the human body. In the near future, not only will we not need to have sex to reproduce, we won t need to be functionally male or female either. We re facing a revolution in the role that sex plays in human identity.
My great friend and former teacher Carey Clarke invited me to write the introduction to his exhibition of paintings at the Glebe Gallery in County Donegal which opened on August 20th 2023. Here is what I wrote, with some pictures from the exhibition. Coming Home is the title of this exhibition, Carey Clarke s first in
The Royal Hibernian Academy Annual Exhibition is the largest exhibition of contemporary art in Ireland. It is also the longest running: this is its 193rd year and the RHA itself, founded in 1823, is celebrating its bicentenary. The RHA Annual is also the largest open submission exhibition in Ireland. This year 4675 works were submitted,