Since the summer of 1997  I have felt and been subjected to the west coast of Ireland; it has become familiar to me: the light, the subtle fluctuations of its earth, the capricious changeability of its water. I want to penetrate its surface and explore the deeper layers within. I want to give a definition, a form and shape to the essence of that which surrounds us. My search leads me to document the tension between extremes: like the introverted silence that lies in wait for the thunderous roar of a storm which is sure to come, like the sun dried stones on the beach for the approaching tide, like the grass that flexes before the wind has touched it.

I paint stills of a landscape tethering on the edge becoming something else; the point of transmutation that will lead to a changed horizon which may yet change again only to return to the point of origin. It is that singular moment where the has-been becomes unbound and transforms into a will-be, that unveils the true identity of the spirit underneath and so becomes an abstraction. (merges reality in with abstraction)

I document the fixtures within this mutable visual quantity; the way the poles on our slipway stand firm and frozen in the soft evening mist but remain just as rigidly present when the storms pick up to batter their countenance, the way they are dry and tall during low tide, but are steeped beneath the flood twice daily.

Crucially no matter how caught up in the landscape my work may be, it remains a probing quest to understand the essence of things, my life.