At age 10, February 7, 1969, my sisters and I are picked up after school and driven to a new home. In just one day, my family had moved from a farm by the sea, surrounded by our wider family of farmers—to Belfast. This was a month before ‘The Troubles’ flared up.
At my new primary school in Belfast, I learned from the school kids that I had an accent. As I laughed with them, I learned to love my accent.
At age 15, shopping in Belfast after school, in the run-up up to Christmas, I was walking quickly away from a bomb scare. No…now we’re being told to go the other way. Don’t run. Quick, run! Please don’t let anyone see me run. It’s just a bomb scare. Now there are bomb scares in multiple shops. How can we know if any are real? Where’s everyone going? Soldiers are herding us along the road.
At 17, I got a Saturday job in a petrol station - lying to my parents that I had a job in a shop because I didn’t want to scare them, there was a spate of petrol pump attendants getting shot in broad daylight; being outdoors and exposed they were easy targets.
We were trained to keep opinions to ourselves, to stand still, be invisible. Not to get involved. To be quiet.
Now, living in California in this unsettling time, a flow of these old memories come to me daily, giving me no choice but to look back to the hopelessness I felt for most of my teenage years. In Belfast I lived in a grey bombed-out city, feeling bored, frustrated, devoid of any vision for a future.
I went to art college because I couldn’t think of anything else to do. I was fortunate; I learned the excitement of exploring an internal creative life, that imagination, creativity, making, design, planning was valued. I found that emotional self-reliance wasn’t about endurance, but about being positive and constructive. It was exciting to learn about modernist art and design, and that it was purposeful and ordered.
Visiting my relations in the countryside, I re-absorbed the beauty of the land with newly educated eyes. I began creating good, in what felt like a city of bad.
I’ve spoken before, about the gentle nature of the countryside where I grew up and how that sensibility is revealed in the aesthetic of my work. Until now I haven’t talked about why serenity and tranquility are so important to me. I need to focus on the good; in my heart and environment. I claim the right to make beauty, to allow inner calm, to give peace. I want to show you the strength of beauty and order.
What I value so much about seeing my work in Estudio Persona’s serene space, is the monastic feeling; a place of quiet reflection and respite. These nine works were curated in response to that environment. It amplifies their spirit.
The works in this digital exhibition are available. Twenty percent of each sale will go to “I Have a Dream” Foundation—Los Angeles, for youth in under-served communities in Los Angeles, a not-for-profit in need of our support. Imagine being able to contribute towards giving young individuals hope that they can be self-reliant and can create a future in their own vision.
Pictures, details and prices of individual works are here.
I would like to express my gratitude to Estudio Persona.
Please read about the work of the “I Have a Dream” Foundation—Los Angeles.