Page 66 - The Digital Cloth Holiday issue 2

I grew up in a household where creativity was watercolour shows. I had been working on
always encouraged. My Mum was a the collection for over a year, capturing local
watercolour landscape artist and so there was farm animals and abandoned houses. The
always plenty of materials and mediums to show was called ‘Timeless’. It went really
play with. I used to tag along with her when well, but throughout the process I began to
she went on painting expeditions around get more and more frustrated with the
Ireland sitting beside her with my own little two-dimensional quality of the work.
sketchbook in the rain as she painted the I decide to take a year to experiment with
dramatic Irish landscapes of the Burren and materials and mediums and see where it
Connemara. went. We had just moved house at the time
Mum says that growing up I was always to a more rural part of the country, and I was
drawing or making something. As a teenager immediately struck by the beauty of the local
I spent hours embellishing bags and clothes, wildlife. I brought my camera everywhere and
stitching album covers from my favourite bands captured snaps of Hares, Pheasants, Foxes,
onto everything. (I wish i had kept them now) Badgers and more.
After school I went to the National college of I started drawing them onto recycled paper
Art and Design in Dublin. I studied Fine art, and hand stitching through the work to
and began to follow in my Mother’s footsteps capture fur and feathers. I loved the effect
carving out a name for myself as a prolific but my hands didn’t :) hand stitching through
watercolour artist. paper is incredibly hard, and the blisters were
4 years ago, I had one of my largest solo awful!