I am not a maker of definite statements. I am not a prophet. I am not an instructor. I paint, when I can manage it. Before turning to painting, I read literature and Philosophy at University College Dublin; perhaps that left me weary of any idea of truth or that there can be a truth, for I am firmly convinced that something can be both true and false. If it is true to the idea of what it is, then it is false to the idea of what it is becoming, and since everything is in a state of becoming it has to live between the idea of being true and being false. Sounds like I have just made a definite statement.

But I am not a philosopher, nor do I paint out of any kind of abstract idea or theory. Although I do make abstract paintings, they (only?) become abstract in their struggle to represent what it is that I feel. One painting leads to another to another and to another, and sometimes when I look back I wonder, did I make that. Very very often I paint over, there is always an echo, a trace of the previous painting coming through, as if I revisit a feeling, and have to dig deeper to unearth it.

Sometimes I think I paint to see. My studio is my cave, I live in it, it is the cave for me, it is my world, and I try to verify it by painting. What happened this morning, what is happening now, my imagination attributing often quite false characteristics to it, so I paint over, which becomes a net cast over a quick sand of forgetfulness. The nets become layers each a memory, each trying to tell a history. I sometimes wonder is it the paint itself that is telling this story or is it me. Perhaps it is wiser to say it is a dialogue. I am arranging, shifting the paint around, looking, listening, following the clues I have left behind for myself trying to paint my way out until the paint is coming at me in a very real way until I reach a stage where I can leave and the paint becomes a painting in itself.

Sometimes I wonder if I paint to cover up, to try to make something?something that is out there outside of me as if to say yes look?there is something there?. because the poverty within me is just so terrifying I can't live with it. To stand naked is a difficult task. It is almost impossible, but every time it is worth a go, worth the effort. And painting in this cave I feel safe enough to let go, to try, knowing I can only fail and succeed in trying again. Does being a painter then become an identity that I have locked myself into, and the cave a cardboard box with a label on it? I don't think so: identity should be defined by activity not by the label. Labels don't convince anybody, labor does?.and painting is a difficult task.

I cannot eat before I paint, I would be two heavy and two sleepy and in a way two contented to move. I have to be hungry. The feeling of poverty, of emptiness, of loneness, of desperation, of the desire to announce myself to the world in all my wretchedness and in all my splendor is all the more acute when I am on the edge of hunger. That is the physically and mentally I am constantly in doubt and I just simply have to be comfortable being like that. Every blank canvas is another terrifying confrontation - my first impulse is to immediately attack it with paint. There is something brilliant and nerve wrecking in that gesture whether it is the fact that I know it is the beginning of another journey, of being lost, of abandon and being abandoned, of trying and of failing, of painting over, of cliches and others gone before me. It remains a fascinating journey. The emptiness of not painting is just more terrifying. There are all kind of painters and all kinds of non-painters, this just happens to be my way. I don't know how much being an immigrant makes me feel that emotion more acutely. Painting becomes a document, a map for my identity. As I blindly fumble along, the brush strokes I leave behind me are my footsteps in the sand?. And I am not a prophet.