The seductive attraction of this painting lies in the extrovertly taciturn quality and by the way in which the gusty even aggressive application of colour is countered by the sensitive, even delicately tentative, scoring of the paint in all its precise and potent hues.

As an artist I am process based, I know how strong the attraction of paint can be, how it can overwhelm the mind with its smells and colours. The odour of oils and the different smells from each colour used in the painting creates an encounter with the substances that is not veiled in science. Smell is an unspoken and largely uncognized dialogue, it speaks silently in this painting.

This painting applies juicy colours that push and pull, the eye is often caught in an impossible impasse, are we gazing onto boundless unlimited and infinite space, or are we peering into hermetic compartments from which nothing else can leak?  Can we simultaneously do both?

There is an involved and tactile approach in the making of this work – with its implications of cathartic release and metaphysical intensity generating an image that ultimately functions as an investigation into the sublime.

Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh.