Monkeying around

SOMETIMES MAKING LIFE SIMPLER FOR YOURSELF and avoiding overthinking a process gets you further. In painting terms, using flat colours does exactly that and it may even prove to hold the key to more c

Every painting’s varying subject matter and scale offers us distinct opportunities and challenges. Before I start any project, I like to consider what I want to convey, what opportunities and challeng

My life in the cheese world stemmed from a geeky fascination with microbial life and how those living microbes can change a food product. I started painting through a fascination with soil microbiolog

THIS PORTRAIT BEGAN LIFE as a pile of old magazines: pages full of colour, text and typography just waiting to be reimagined. I’ve always loved how collage can transform the ordinary into something co

From rustic barns to Riviera villas, Pablo Picasso’s studios were engines of invention. Picasso: From the Studio at the National Gallery of Ireland, in partnership with Musée national Picasso-Paris, t

I STRUGGLED INTO MY LAYERS, picked up my light sketching kit and off I went up into the hills behind where I live. I wasn’t the first to arrive; halfway up the hill I could already hear the cries of e