DETAILS
Born: 1978 Dublin, Ireland
Resides and works in Brighton, UK
1997-2001: BA Visual Communications, UWE, Bristol, UK
Studio: Unit 2, 9-10 Jew Street Brighton

REPRESENTATION
Circle Contemporary Gallery, Cornwall, UK

FEATURES & EXHIBITIONS
2025, Subjects In Motion (Group Exhibition), Circle Contemporary, Cornwall, UK
2024, Open (Group Exhibition), Atelier Gallery, Brighton, UK
2024, Unity (Group Exhibition), Helm Gallery, Brighton, UK
2024, Contemporary Collage Magazine (Issue 30)
2023, Open Studio Day (Solo Exhibition), Brighton, UK

COMMISSIONS & COLLECTIONS
Various private collections in UK, US and Europe.

STATEMENT
My practice centres on collage, not as an afterthought but as a primary and flexible language. I work mostly in large-format, hand-painted paper collage, using water-based paints and inks. It’s a physical, tactile process that leans into the simplicity and honesty of the material. Nothing is digital; every cut, tear, and brushstroke is done by hand, and that presence is part of the point. The work resists being flattened or sped up. It's slow, deliberate, and asks for real world, close and quiet attention.

Collage is often seen as a sideline in Western art history, something casual or associated with childhood, amateurism or with the last years of Matisse. But I’m interested in what happens when we start from that place, and push cut paper as a serious, expressive form. For me, it’s not a fallback, it's the heart of the work.

There’s a balance in what I do between experimentation with materials and a more personal, inward focus. While the compositions are often semi-abstract, they’re shaped by memory, reflection, or a response to literature. Recent works, for instance, draw on The Waste Land by T. S. Eliot, not as illustration, but as emotional and thematic ground. Some pieces are personal tributes, like the veiled figure in Dubhghaill, or Himavant, which speaks to our world’s current anxieties.

I use a limited palette, mostly shades of blue with small interruptions of orange. That choice isn’t about aesthetics alone, it’s a way to hold emotional intensity, opposition and restraint in tension and I’ve found a kind of freedom and focus from the boundaries.

Though collage is the main focus, I also paint and draw. But paper; its texture, its modesty remains at the core. It’s a material I return to again and again, both for what it is and what it can stand in for: fragility, presence, resistance and adaptability.

I don’t set out to make work that’s overtly about identity, but being a queer Irish artist shapes how and where I’m coming from. Themes like dislocation, reverence, and quiet emotion thread through the work. I’m not interested in spectacle. I’m more drawn to depth, clarity, and the slow insistence that certain materials—and certain personal experiences—belong in the centre, not the margins.