Connecting Home, Spirit and Heritage Through Painting
This research investigates anam áite (Irish term for ‘soul-place’), through painting-based, practice-led inquiry grounded in phenomenology, materiality, and the affective qualities of place. It asks how might contemporary painting practices evoke the spirit of place and engage with its affective, environmental and ancestral dimensions? Soul Place: Anam Áite is a journey to better understand how painting can express concepts of place in Aotearoa New Zealand and Ireland.
The research is materially engaged and process-based, emphasising the agency of matter and the collaborative relationship between artist, medium and methods as they relate to the agency of matter. I use cold wax medium as it serves as a key element of my practice for its ability to hold uncertainty, flux, and transformation. The wax, pigment, and surface behave in ways that exceed intention. They crack, absorb, resist, and transform. These intrinsic material responses evolve into methods of their own, guiding the direction of the work and fostering a collaborative rather than unilateral practice. This approach resonates with new materialist and phenomenological perspectives, where material is understood not as passive but as an active participant in shaping the world.
Artworks are conceived as durational artefacts, containing traces of ecological, ancestral, and perceptual time. Through material transformation, the research sees painting as an agentive, ethical, and attentive practice. Painting is positioned as a form of worlding and world-bending, where spirit, matter, and memory converge to evoke the resonance of place and the complexity of entangled existence.
This research contributes to contemporary discourse on painting by proposing a materially and philosophically grounded approach to art-making that is responsive to place, time and relationality.
