Le Solas

with light

Paintings drawing from the wild and luminous landscape of Co. Mayo, places that can evoke a story and a living relationship with the land. I have been looking and walking, witnessing and sheltering in the open lands around the Ox Mountains Co. Mayo, a place where I lived as a small child and to which I have returned in recent years.

This exhibition follows on from other work that I have been making around landscape including the film and paintings exhibited as part of “Scéal Mhapáil | Mapping Stories”. That was a group exhibition at the Linenhall Arts Centre in Castlebar earlier this spring, 2025.

In ómós do Manchán Magan and his book “32 words for Field”, I began looking at the landscape of Co. Mayo through this lens, finding fields that could match each word. This is ongoing process looking for the kinds of fields or landscapes that can evoke the qualities of these many words for ‘field’ in the Irish language.

My father also grew up in the Gaeltacht area of Iorras Co. Mayo and has shared with me his memories of that time, and also the field names of his youth. I ‘ve been creating illustrations to capture this which is also a playful sense of connection to the land as he remembers, as through a child’s eyes. I hope to communicate a sense of innocence and a lightness, an orientation through memory and story that is rooted in a way of enduring human relationship with the landscape. This is a way of being or a culturally embedded lens of perception that has evolved over thousands of years in Ireland – the traces of which are found through the Irish language.

Once we know where we are we can truly experience the earth on which we stand. May we experience a depth of the past within the present as firm foundations through our own presence ; open to the imagination of what can be. May our perception infused with the light of awareness.

The following are images featured in a current exhibition at the Enda ‘O Brien library in Scariff, Co. Clare. The exhibition runs until January 10th.