The term ábhar neamhbheo is a hybrid of the words neamh and beo, not alive. It is the Irish for still life and somehow it’s more suggestive of a different realm, where different possibilities could coexist. The objects are from a domestic world, cluttered with discarded playthings, cheap food and is imbued with a sad nostalgia. The toys are broken never played with, a lost childhood. These sit next to processed food that’s well past its sell by date. A headless strongman clenches his fists, a native
American plastic toy aims pointlessly at a bird skull that peeks out from in front of a plastic tree. Lurid helium balloons grin and grimace out of us returning our gaze questioning the extent in which the world and all its present awfulness is a better and more sustainable place under our watch.

This artwork started out as a constructed installation. Many such constructions happen in the studio. It is a form of childsplay, of invented worlds, but a few of them go beyond their embryonic form of an installation and most cease to exist. Making art like this through traditional means such as paint on canvas is countercultural in this fast paced world. This is slow art, where our experience of time is logarithmic and incessantly speeds up as we journey through our lives. Painting like this is an effort to hold on and possess this transience even if it is only a mirage behind a curtain.