Duende, the darker work

I've just moved into a new studio in the Irish Design Shop and Studios, hopefully I'll have some new work underway when we open for Culture Night on September 25th. Here are some of the darker paintings from the Talbot Show, focussing on the anxieties associated with womanhood and adulthood. In the catalogue I made reference to Nick cave's lecture 'The Secret Life of the Love Song' he said " All love songs must contain duende. For the love song is never truly happy. It must first embrace the potential for pain... The love song must resonate with the susurration of sorrow, the tintinnabulation of grief". People have been asking me why duende? Well the simple answer is that I feel the paintings have to reflect the complex mixture of feelings associated with childhood and parenthood, the feelings universal to our experience of life - joy, sadness, apprehension, excitement, duende seemed to sum this up for me. Thanks to everybody who contributed to the catalogue and who turned up on the opening night.