Statement

There are certain rare moments in life when I feel I am witnessing magic, I try to capture this in a painting. I grew up on a dairy farm in East Donegal, where the large dramatic skies and open landscape have influenced my vision as a painter.

Many of my paintings are a visual diary and an emotional interpretation of events in my life, featuring people and places that are dear to me. I make paintings in order to have a conversation with, or tell a story to the viewer. When I produce a body of work I feel as if each painting is a chapter of one book.

Elements seem to creep into my paintings slowly of their own accord. After I graduated from art college in 2000, I was painting quiet empty landscapes for a long time. From 2008 tiny signs of human life started to appear – telegram poles, chimneys. From 2012 animals appeared in my landscapes, then by 2016 humans started to arrive. The human figure was very far away at the beginning then they gradually came closer until I could see their faces.

Humans led me to houses, such as the farmhouse where I grew up in East Donegal, the old Georgian house where I lived in Dublin for twenty years and buildings I saw in Norway while on residency there in 2018.

Most of my paintings are set in winter, I prefer the raw mood and light of a season when the elements of nature are stripped to their bare essentials.

I spend a lot of time outside taking photographs, especially at dusk when the atmosphere is most intense. These photographs are used as source material for my work later on.

Ann Quinn, 2023