The location of this painting is a place I spent a lot of time in with my young family over the past number of years (Donadea forest park, Kildare). The time of year of the image is exactly sundown at winter solstice, it marks the turning point of new beginnings and also a leaving behind of times past. Something we must all do, sometimes gladly, sometimes regrettably.
These memories often create strong emotional attachments to the places in which they were formed. Revisiting this place floods my head with cherished memories and the trees act almost as sentinels to this headspace. Revisiting the place separated by years can have a profound consciousness altering effect.
This painting was started more than 9 months ago and as such has its own experiences and memories locked into it, formed during the protracted painting period. In these paintings, the landscape acts as a metaphor for the cycle of experience and memory.
I’m drawn to the forest floor, the base of trees and the dead branches left behind either by stormy weather or the effects of time. They serve as metaphors for death and rejuvenation, the passing of time and what the future holds for us.
I’m enthralled by the change that takes place in a forest at sundown (the winter solstice being the most profound of these changes for me), there seems to be a dissonance between rational thought and fear of the approaching darkness as noises morph into voices and shapes anthropomorphise. It can be truly unsettling and utterly compelling at the same time.
This is part of an ongoing project using landscape as a metaphor for the human condition in the Northern Romantic tradition. I’ve been visiting 3 locations (that I have strong personal attachment to) during sundown at Winter solstice for the past number of years and the repeated visits and paintings are forming their own narrative for how I document and deal with the ever changing landscape of the experience and formation of memories.
The locations are:
Donadea Forest park, Kildare.
Castletown woods, Kildare.
Phoenix park, Dublin.

