Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh is a leading painter of her generation.
About Sinéad's Commission
Literature has been hugely influential to Sinéad, particularly the work of Pádraic Ó Conaire and the works of Samuel Beckett, Seamus Heaney, and Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill. For this commission, she has researched, read, and developed new collaborations in the area of literature and continues to develop work in her studio. Ni Mhaonaigh's interests are in the act of painting itself, and in the qualities of paint as a material. She is engaging with painting as a language. Much like a poet, she is interested in ambiguity and in anachronisms.
It has been said she is a painter who suggests rather than represents. She is not particularly concerned with communicating specific viewpoints or holding her viewer in the confinements of allegory or allusion. She is interested in painting as a thing in and of itself. This is what makes her so interesting: her commitment to holding an artistic line with rigour, earnestness, and energy. Irish is Ni Mhaonaigh's mother tongue. As she thinks in Irish, she titles her painting in Irish, making reference to her interests in borders and boundaries. The language is rich in illuminating references and nuances relating to landscape, phenomena, and emotion.
