‘A visit to Chester Beatty Library’, Version 2, Proof, Drypoint, 36 x 24 cms
(Exhibited in Artist's Proof, a collaboration between the Chester Beatty Library and Graphic Studiuo Dublin)
For the last twenty years I have been exploring the concept of ‘Mapping’. I moved back to live in Limerick city and began to draw and make prints of my environment. Prompted by my new surroundings, I started to include in the work, not only topographic information but also personal experiences, observations and memories (I was born and grew up in Limerick), references to historical events (I studied history including the late C17 period when the action in Limerick was for a short time centre stage in Europe), records of temporal activity - routes travelled e.g and so on; in other words the work became less ‘landscape’ and more ‘map’.