Blackwater
“Solo Exhibition: Blackwater
Blackwater: Myths, Memory, and the Passage of Time
Blackwater is an inquiry into the intersection of myth, memory, and place, re-examining personal narratives formed in childhood through the lens of adult reflection. The series seeks to excavate early perceptions—long submerged within the sedimented layers of memory—and to reanimate the formative myths that continue to shape identity. Each painting operates as a mnemonic device, tethered to a distinct time, belief system, or emotional terrain. Central to this exploration is the River Blackwater, both as a literal landmark of my early life and as a symbolic conduit for memory’s dual tendencies toward permanence and transformation.
Sketchbooks: Art Notes and Fragments of Flow
Riverwalk constitutes an ongoing series of sketchbooks documenting direct, embodied encounters with the River Blackwater and its surrounding landscapes. These sketchbooks function as fieldwork: sites of observation, reflection, and improvisation, capturing the river’s shifting moods and material realities in situ.
"Planting the flow" Medium: Watercolour on Paper Dimensions :380x260mm “To learn one thing, you must let go of another. The river does not cling to its source.” — John O’Donohue
"Unbridled Current" Medium: Watercolour on Paper Dimensions :380x260mm “There is no end to the wind, no end to the sea.” — Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill
"Forgotten Journey" Medium: Watercolour on Paper Dimensions :380x260mm “The past beats inside me like a second heart.” — John Banville
"The Watched Water" Medium: Watercolour on Paper Dimensions:380x260mm “In the shadows of the Blackwater River”
“ In the shadow of the BlackWater River” Medium: Watercolour on Paper. Dimensions:180x125mm “The shadows of our ancestors lean over us, whispering through reeds.” — From Boglands by Seamus Heaney
” Stillness is the Rivers Edge” >Medium: Watercolour on Paper. Dimensions:380x260mm “There is a silence beneath all things that speaks.” — John Moriarty
" The River's Wrath" Medium: Watercolour on Paper Dimensions :380x260mm “All nature is at war, and the rage of the river is an old fury.” — Medbh McGuckian
"Rooted Remains" Medium: Watercolour on Paper Dimensions: 340x740mm “We carry the bones of the past in the roots of our lives.” — Anne Enright
"Silent Sentinels" Medium: Watercolour on Paper Dimensions: 340x740mm “The trees, still as stone, remember what we forget.” — Doireann Ní Ghríofa
" Obsidian Shoreline" Medium: Watercolour on Paper Dimensions: 340x740mm “Darkness was a mirror, and the river the edge of knowing.” — Eavan Boland
"Waiting Spring" Medium: Watercolour on Paper Dimensions:380x260mm “Even in the winter of the soul, something prepares to bloom.” — Paula Meehan
"Riverbone" Dimensions 120x170mm “The land remembers what the body forgets.” — Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill
“Byre in stillness” >Medium: Watercolour on Paper. Dimensions:180x125mm “Stillness is where the spirit dwells.” — John O’Donohue
"Midnight Current" Dimensions 180x125mm “The river at night tells the truth we hide in daylight.” — Inspired by Patrick Kavanagh
"The River's strange whisper" Dimensions:380x260mm “All rivers carry stories — some we understand, others whisper through the dark.” — Original, inspired by Irish oral tradition
"Shifting Light" Dimensions 380x260mm “The light changes, and with it, what we see becomes what we feel.” — Michael Longley
"The Boat" Dimensions 380x260mm “I was a voice. I was a vessel. I was a boat adrift on the poem.” — Eavan Boland, “Anna Liffey”
"The unseen beneath the trees" Dimensions:380x260mm “I can hear the grass growing.” — My great-grand Auntie Mary
"Interrupted silence" Dimensions: 380x260mm “Listen for the corncrakes building nests in the long grass by the river’s edge.” — My mother