My current series of paintings

I was inspired by the work I saw on a trip to Ireland, namely the Book of Kells. 800 CE, it’s an illuminated manuscript of the four gospels of the Christian New Testament, currently at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland. The work is the most famous of the medieval illuminated manuscripts for the intricacy, detail and majesty of the illustrations.

Viewable online, in person it was much smaller than I’d imagined – just 13 x 10 inches (33 x 25 cm). I was enamoured by the incredible detail on ancient paper. Each page depicted specific parts of the bible, however the iconography included imagery from the artist monks’ daily lives. For instance, spread across the pages were cats doing cat things, like chasing mice that were eating the hosts! Holy cats.

Though I could not, even now with all the available tools, create anything nearly as entrancing and alive as The Book of Kells, it did inspire me to create art that codifies and records, like those ancient monks, the world we live in today. A world  ripe with controversy, conspiracies and dramatic events affecting so many of us.

As there are many in the Book of Kells, expect to see cats… 😉  (There aren’t any cats yet…)