Art Encounters

‘In the sun I feel as one’ - Kurt Cobain, All Apologies. The dog was siting in the backseat and I had just driven in from the country to drop the kids off at school. I was driving the return route home by the prison on Mulgrave…

I once had a conversation with a guy in a pub that I’ve thought about a lot in the last month. Years ago, sitting in Palace Bar on Dublin’s Fleet Street, I got talking to a businessman who, for some reason, told me – in detail – about the…

All these changes everywhere, Just go ahead and take my hand, Hold me close, now let me go, Try and understand, In Chains, The War on Drugs It’s now a year since I travelled to the hills of Clare to adopt a border collie called…

This series I’ve been writing over the last year concerns the curiosity to understand why we respond to art in whatever form it takes. We become curious as to why we are affected by art and seek out reasons. Curiosity leads to us to…

What's my line? I'm happy cleaning windows, Take my time, I'll see you when my love grows. 'Cleaning Windows' - Van Morrison It was September and I had just returned from the U.S. having completed a J1 student visa. I stood in…

All those insecurities, That have held me down for so long, I can't say I've found a cure for these, But at least I know them, So they're not so strong, George Michael, Waiting (Reprise). It’s now a calendar year since I began…

‘I grabbed you by the gilded beams, That’s what tradition means.’ The Smiths, I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish. Last year, having skipped over it during my undergraduate years, I read Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. One…

Ach na dearmaid ar gcaithú, Cuimhnidh lámh ar an mead, A tháinigh muid tharais, Más féidir linn cuimhniú, is teacht ar an tuiscint, Más féidir linn tuiscint, maith (far an) croí. (But don’t forget our sorrows,…

‘Every set of phenomena, whether cultural totality or sequence of events, has to be fragmented, disjointed, so that it can be sent down the circuits; every kind of language has to be resolved into a binary formulation so that it can…

“No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me.” Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time. The above quote is…