About me

More About Me

I have been really lucky. Against the odds, I have had the rare privilege to grow up and be loved with my family and friends, in my community. I say privilege because that is what it was. It wasn’t something I, or my family, could have taken for granted or claimed as a right… it was a privilege. Against the wishes of the authorities, and with the co-operation of the nuns in my local school, I was saved from a childhood marred by institutionalisation and segregation that would have forever marked me out and separated me from my family and my community.

And even though I had this advantage and went on to art college and graduate as a teacher, and later to study at university for a masters degree in equality studies , I have found it hard to make the transition to paid work.

So, it’s just as well that I am a highly motivated, self-reliant free-thinker. It means I have the spirit and confidence to work freelance and the temperament of an entrepreneur. As a result my working life has been nothing if not interesting.
As well as odd teaching stints in schools and art colleges, I have worked as an artist-in-residence in prisons, played the role of Althea in the movie Fur with Nicole Kidman & Robert Downey, Jnr. I worked as a radio producer, researcher and documentary-maker with RTE (national public radio)

I have researched policy documents on the arts, as well as publish prose and poetry. In between times I have been an activist and campaigner for civil rights
I have devised, initiated, fund-raised and co-ordinated an equality training project for the EU, worked in public relations for an art gallery; I've been a masseuse and I have made earrings for a living. In short, I am very, very resourceful.

I may love taking risks and trying new things, but even so, by the time I was in my mid-forties, I was taken aback to find myself itching for change, again. I had arrived at a place in my life where I had a creative and exciting job in radio. The thought of starting again, with something entirely new, was not anything I was prepared to consider. Really. I was too old, had made too many career changes and had a big investment in staying where I was, because I had started a pension. And then everything changed...

I suddenly and very urgently felt really ill. Before I lost consciousness.. my life flashed before me (like it does in the movies). I remember thinking it was good that I had no unfinished business in my personal life. I felt clear with my nearest and dearest. I was not dying with a whole lot left unsaid. I also, bizarrely thought, that there might even be some advantage in that at least my husband would get my ‘death-in-service’ benefit. I was sorry that my last action in life would appear to have been my role as Althea in the movie FUR 2006 … and I really regretted not having given painting a better shot.

Well, I didn’t die obviously, not then any way (on the carpet in my hallway, nearly four years ago). But as the ambulance arrived and the terrible noise in my ears subsided (the rushing of blood back to my head), by then I already had decided that something’s got to change.

And change I did. Not with a great plan, nor with any precise or clear road map… but it quickly became apparent that if I was to get better, it would mean taking some time out.
And, after the initial shock wore off and the weeks became months and time started to slip by, I found myself doing always what I wanted to do, which was painting.

It brought me back to my childhood, and also back to the future I had been avoiding. Twice a week I was taken out of school, (missing knitting class) and was brought to the technical (second-level) school and there John Gilligan was charged with teaching me and a bunch of unruly teenagers to paint.

Even then, at the age of 5, I knew the subtext of these efforts. Painting is what people born without arms do, invariably. It's all we can do, really. Well, I kind of liked painting, but resented being put in that particular box.

Looking at this image then and now, I get that same feeling. I know that little girl with the big bow tie ribbon. I see a face full of concentration. I raise an eyebrow at the memory of the ribbon. My knee aches at the height of that paintbrush and the stretch of that left leg. I can smell the powder paint and still feel the texture of the powder dry and chalk splattered wooden floorboards.

And I know that it has taken me a long time to get here, where I am meant to be, right now. So, I would like to take this opportunity to invite you to be part of the rest of this story.