As a geologist and climate scientist in Ireland, I explore the rigours of glaciation, the vagaries of climate change, and our role as humans in the Earth system. As an artist, I yield to that urge in us all to try to recreate this journey on paper & canvas.
I completed my PhD in 2010. Since then, I have been pursuing research in Antarctica, Greenland, & the warmer bits in between. The majority of my work is field-based by design, requiring days and weeks in remote, often mountainous country. There, I combine geomorphology, mapping, geochemistry, & archaeology - plus much arm waving - to dig deep into our planet's past and to project its (& our) future.
As a human, these places are also psychologically moving. I like to let my mind wander the same landscapes but on a different plane, and with different tools - pens, pencils, &, watercolour - deriving my inspiration from the knowledge that within even the darkest, most ancient rock face resides a history of titanic dynamism, that ice can crush, & that the forces of nature continue to shape our lives in every way imaginable. To put onto paper or canvas my own impression of what I see is a real joy; it is tonic for the exhausted brain, too.
The camera: First, it was a 35mm film camera, then a burly Canon 50D that is too heavy for long hill days. Most of these images derive from the field work that has taken me far & wide over the past two decades, from both polar circles to the South American tropics. Here also are images from the Earth's middle latitudes, a vast and bumpy natural laboratory in which I live, teach, and study the causes & manifestations of abrupt climate change. Thus, from science comes art: a beautifully simple equation.
Occasionally, I will post items to the University of Galway's Geography news page and our Palaeoenvironmental Research Unit's website. Not often, but sometimes it's worth a look ...