ELEVATIONS
The hills, here before, trail along mourning land,
scarred, tarnished and worn - still strong they stand.
As muse, myth and legend,
Their tales linger, never ended.
Born witness to conflict - “Commedagh me,” they call.
Swallowed echoes in their vastness, where all within is small.
Developed in the period following the Covid-19 lockdown, this body of work grew from a renewed relationship with the Mourne Mountains. Having grown up close to them, the mountains had always been part of my everyday landscape - visible on journeys, visited with family and familiar through camping and walking. Yet it was during a period of uncertainty, after graduating during the pandemic and returning home without a clear sense of what came next, that I began to experience them differently. As restrictions lifted, I found myself returning to the Mournes frequently, finding in their scale and permanence a grounding presence and a space to slow down and reconnect.
This sense of connection extends beyond the mountains themselves. Growing up on a farm within their wider landscape, I became aware of how their presence could be traced across the surrounding land. I remember my mother describing these subtle changes as the “echoes of the Mournes” - the land becoming increasingly uneven and undulating as it moves towards the mountains. This idea became a way of thinking about how a landscape can extend beyond its visible boundaries, leaving physical and emotional traces across the places surrounding it.
The paintings explore repeated journeys, observation, memory and belonging through oil painting. I became interested in the fact that the Mournes have been walked, remembered, written about and painted countless times, yet every encounter remains individual. The paths are repeated, the mountains remain, but the experience of looking is continually changing. Weather, light, season, distance and the perspective of the person encountering them all create subtle shifts in how the landscape is understood and represented.
There is also a sense of comfort in the vastness of the mountains and the awareness of being small within them. Their permanence places individual experience within a much longer sense of time, offering perspective during a period of personal uncertainty and transition. Rather than attempting to make definitive representations of the Mournes, the paintings record my own encounters with a landscape that has been familiar to me throughout my life. Each becomes a distinct interpretation of the same enduring place, exploring how repeated looking can reveal new ways of seeing something deeply familiar.
Golden Hour
Oil Paint
2025
Pastures New
Oil Paint
2025
Grey Skies
Oil paint
2025
PROJECT SUMMARY