ARTIST STATEMENT

I identify as a Mixed Media Artist with a penchant for Encaustic. The versatility of the wax medium gives me a creative avenue for all feeling, and an adaptability I find necessary in art, as in life. Many of my pieces are hand pulled wax and pigment monotypes on fine Japanese Kozo papers collaged to panel, some with over painting of encaustic layers. Other pieces include acrylic mixed-media works on canvas and folded works, collage and sculpture/installation... houses and homes...scripts, stories that don't meet expectation...fractured flat colour-field works.

In my most recent works the layering, mark making, cutting, tearing, folding, attaching, building and over-painting of these final images, all act as metaphor for medical procedures, personal body interference, loss of identity, grief and obstacle and story telling.

There is a state of "off-ness" that I identify in my work, a slight discomfort.  its often initially viewed as subdued or calm painted and printed work, even meditative in its initial appearance, which belies what I identify as its somewhat "difficult ambience" the calm is a mask to all the layers underneath.

'When all your walls have shifted... its time to rebuild!'  Hidden Out Loud - Niamh O'Connor. 

ARTIST BIO

Niamh O'Connor is a Dublin born visual artist working from rural Co. Monaghan in non objective abstraction.  She is a painter, printmaker and sometimes sculptor, favouring  acrylic, mixed media and encaustic. 

She has exhibited both nationally and internationally , issues around personal and social history, health and recovery, housing and homelessness and pure expressionism are all areas she is inspired by and has featured in previous works and exhibitions.

Her latest body of works "Twenty :Twenty Vision" is a series of works that derive inspiration from Lockdown, this entire collection sees O'Connor return to a pure painting practice, acrylic, mixed media on large canvas and papers, from reeds and rushes to revolt and resurgence, inspired by limited movement during lockdown and global news streams feeding into her subconscious. 

Of note are her works for her solo exhibitions
“A Ballast Full of Hope”, Market House Monaghan, looking at the Earl Grey Famine Orphans journey from the workhouses of Ireland to Australia, 2015, and:
'hidden...OUT LOUD', addressing the reformation and idea of self when diagnosed with hidden illness, shown at the Solas Art Gallery Ballinamore,Co. Leitrim. Sept/Oct 2017 and The Markethouse Gallery/County Arts Office Gallery, Monaghan Town November 2017.

Niamh's works are held in private collections across Ireland, Europe and the US. 
​All works shown, unless otherwise stated, are available for exhibition and sale. Commissions welcome.

Recent Press: