Ongoing work has developed from recent research in Co. Mayo and Co. Sligo, exploring light in darkness. In collaboration with archaeologist Sam Moore and Uilleann piper Stephen Porter, places of darkness, both historical and natural, (Carrowkeel Megalithic Complex, Caves of Kesh, Moore Hall and Nephin dark sky park), monuments to place and time, to past and present, were visited and experienced. This research lead me home to my studio, thinking about traces and cyphers within the landscape. Marks made on my studio desk from the creation of previous paintings, then became geographies of past actions. With trace and cypher being key, these marks have been traced using clear vinyl and acrylic paint.
However, it felt impossible to trace these accurately and they began to take on a language of their own, with just a hint or a trace of their past lives. Reaching outwards from the confines of inner physical space, they give articulation to the experience of being, as cyphers, tangible markers of time, with the notion of space a unifying force. The works have been photographed and filmed in the landscape, crossing water and boundaries. Removing them from the past and into the present. Here process becomes retrieval, with echoes throughout my practice. Here, poetry and painting are spatial trajectories, organising space and giving voice to the unspoken story. Here, fragments are excavated diffusely, relived, their tracings recorded and reproduced. This correlation between landscape and inscape is expressed as a correlation between concealment and revelation, absence and presence and becomes ‘a bright nowhere’ from which presence emanates.