I’m a Wexford-based landscape artist that introduces slight and surrealist exaggeration into the key locations of my everyday life. How does one’s perspective of their hometown change when unable to afford nor find accommodation for themselves? I answer this question via a drained outlook of my home in Courtown, Co. Wexford through a rigorous and blunt approach to painting. As arrows of light continue to pierce through the South-East sky, harsh shadows land and direct my attention to the time lapse that has occurred since my artistic journey began. Myself and thousands of Irish students have commuted for multiple hours each morning of a 4+ year long Bachelor’s Degree. The steepness of Dublin city’s student accommodation costs has turned my creative focus into my current and realistic place in Ireland rather than a hypothetical and idealistic one. I explore familiar surroundings with a monochromatic colour palette, precise mark making and varying gestures in order to tear this hometown of mine down to its bare essentials. Upon handcrafted wooden canvases, I depict scenes common to the working class population of Courtown with themes such as uniformity and the inevitable ticking of the clock.
