Donalda O’Neill
Category
Guest Artist, PaintingDonalda O’Neill
I come from Northern Ireland originally and my experience of growing up in a troubled place informs my recent work. I feel that through revisiting and painting familiar, ‘safe’ landscapes I am trying to reconnect with something older than any of the uneasy history that I experienced, grounding myself in the landscape and attempting to feel something solid, a new relationship and a different sense of belonging.
I am interested in the idea of the ‘sublime’ in that being in the Irish landscape is a particular sensory experience I don’t feel anywhere else. It taps into something, it feels immeasurable. My insignificance in comparison to nature and history and the story of these places is magnified. When I am there now I feel bound to it, while always knowing I have to leave again. This creates an urgency in me to record, to paint, to absorb as much as I can before it is lost to me again. The process of the painting is about holding on.
