An insight into one of Ireland’s most recognisable artists …
How do you describe your work? I describe it as slow art: a term I use to express the deliberate pace at which I create. Most of my work is painting, though sometimes I expand into sculpture and print. It’s all about layering, creating depth and meaning through the act of accumulation of ideas, images and objects. The work I create blends references from art history, such as the devotional intimacy of early paintings, with contemporary imagery and natural forms. These seemingly disparate elements come together to create a kind of painted multiverse where different realities, timelines and references co-exist in one space.
I use saturated colours, creating surfaces that are both luminous and sobering. Ultimately, my work is about creating space for reflection, for witnessing the delicate balance between life and decay, between what we protect and endanger.
Who or what has been influential to your artistic journey? It really has taken a village. The people, places and moments that shaped me are deeply woven into my work. I grew up in a large, warm and noisy family where everything was up for debate, and that early curiosity and questioning still drives my practice. Time spent with my grandparents gave me a lasting respect for the land, while camping trips and childhood discoveries opened my eyes to the natural world. A summer in the Gaeltacht at 16-years-old deepened my love of the Irish language, and my fascination with how meaning shifts between words and cultures.
Studying at NCAD in the 1990s was transformative – a time of conceptual rigour and technical excitement as Ireland itself was opening outward. The friendships and studio communities that grew from that period have remained vital.
Being a mother has profoundly influenced my work: that dual role of nurturer and protector, and the foreboding that sometimes accompanies love in an uncertain world.
In recent years, founding the Shell//Ter Artist Collective with Niamh McGuinness, Allyson Keehan, Sharon Murphy and Diana Copperwhite working across painting, print, photography and installation has been pivotal. It emerged during the pandemic as a space of refuge and dialogue as a living artwork born from solidarity and imagination. The same instincts that shaped Shell//Ter – to connect, question and make space for others – underpin my paintings. The work that emerged, like the collective itself, is built from that same impulse to keep alive what might otherwise be lost.
I draw deeply from the continuum of art history, from the Flemish and Spanish masters, folding those influences into the domestic world around me. Relics all become metaphors for fragility, resilience and the sublime within the everyday.
My work sits between home and institution. The conversations within communities like Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, the RHA and Aosdána continue to sustain and challenge me. Conceptually, I’m drawn to the Anthropocene, Glenn Abrecht’s concept of Solastalgia and the physics of perception.
How and where do you work? I’ve always felt compelled to collect and my studio is filled with boxes of domestic detritus, old photographs, bones, you name it. The process is experimental and often playful. Some of these gathered elements transform into temporary installations, but not all of them become finished pieces. I make hundreds of these experiments and only a few eventually make it to the canvas. In a way, painting itself is an act of resistance to the fast-paced, image-saturated world we live in today. It’s about slowing down and creating something that holds its own in the noise of modern life.
I work in a studio separate from my home, located in a Georgian building in Dublin. This space is essential to my practice. It’s a nurturing environment that provides a refuge where I can give my full attention to making, without distraction. I’m deeply grateful to my landlord who offers this generous space to many other artists. It’s an act of solidarity that allows us to create and I feel very fortunate.
Tell us about your latest exhibition Flicker, Flicker: The exhibition grapples with the fragility of nature and the looming uncertainty of our future. It’s about merging these two worlds – the domestic and the mythic, the human and the natural – and seeing how they intersect and influence one another.
I hope this exhibition creates a sense of stillness and hope. It’s about stepping between care and carelessness, death and regeneration. An tairseach idir an taobh istigh agus an taobh amuigh, idir an ceantar agus an alltar – a threshold between the inside and outside, the domestic and sacred. I want visitors to feel that sense of liminality, and I hope that people leave with a deeper sense of connection to both the natural world and to one another.
Need to know: Geraldine’s work is found at Kevin Kavanagh Gallery in Dublin and on Instagram @geraldineoneillstudio.
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