The Arts Council (Ireland)

I am very pleased to have been awarded an Irish Arts Council Agility Award.

I have been making an increasing number of miniature works over the last couple of years. Initially, these were experiments during Covid on small, scrap metal plates but they have become a new route in my practice that I wish to explore further. For example, at the moment I am running a ‘tiny portrait project’, where I ask people on social media to send an image of themselves or somebody close to them, I then paint my interpretation of the image as a miniature portrait (usually oil paint on copper or aluminium) and send it back to them without charge, (many of these people are in Ireland, some I know from my past, some new to me). I have found it to be a project that encourages communication, a bit of the unknown and mutual generosity. This project will take a similar tack, but will be approached slightly differently in that I want to ask fellow members of the Irish Diaspora to engage with it and help me determine what it is like to have left and be ‘looking in’ or ‘looking back’ or maybe ‘looking away’. In a similar vein to the tiny portrait project I will ask people to send memories, images or things for me to base this new work upon. The objects produced might include paintings, 3D prints or drawings, compiled to make a unique description of being away. My goal is to combine this new set of works into an easily transportable, miniature exhibition, which if successful can hopefully be exhibited in Ireland without requiring a great amount of space. I don’t know yet what format the box might be but it will be constructed in a way to make it easily moved, exhibited and re- packaged. I have mentioned previously that my work sometimes moves between digital and traditional working practices and I feel that this project might start to link them somehow within one (tiny) space. It would combine what I have learned in Scotland and build upon what I have learned in Ireland. This also builds upon my interest in the history of miniatures and in particular miniature portraiture. These tiny objects can become keepsakes of memories. They can be iconic and personal reminders of people or place and I wish to explore this further with these themes. Miniature paintings were frequently carried by those who went abroad in the 18^th and 19^th Centuries to remind them of people they had left behind. In my experience I have found that miniature paintings can embue a sense of wonder at their ability to embody what they depict in such a tiny format; they can be powerful little things and they require further investigation in the 21^st Century.

With thanks to the Arts Council of Ireland. Stay tuned here and to insta for future updates.