Another painting that prompted people to share personal accounts related to grief is the one of Oscar. Son of Oisín and grandson of Fionn, Oscar is mortally wounded during the Battle of Gabhra, just after killing the High King of Ireland, Cairbre Lifechair, himself. Oscar’s death is also the end of the Fianna, it embodies a moment when several generations of men who fought together understand that their world is over, and this is probably why it takes such an important place in the later stories.

This painting represents the moment after the battle, Oscar, without weapons, rests in the earth, the rivers and hills of his country wrap around him like a blanket. The sun is gold, it is what brings movement, life. Oscar himself disappears into the landscape, lifeless. I also wanted to represent him as very young and vulnerable, because heroic stories often use death to emphasise courage, but this can make us forget the most obvious thing: Oscar is described in the texts as young, at the height of his strength, he is probably only a very young man when he dies.

Oscar, mourned by Fionn, is first of all a grandson, a son, someone whose life could have continued. Courage is not enough to give meaning to this death and cannot erase the idea of a death that came “too soon”.

This story today of course speaks to all grieving parents. It can also speak more collectively about what patriarchy and the masculinity it has defined ask of young men in the name of virility, courage, reputation, loyalty, or in the name of a legacy they did not choose. Oscar receives the expectations of several generations and dies at the moment when the world he was asked to defend collapses around him.

His father, Oisín, survives this collapse. In my painting, I chose to represent him both young and old, folded in on himself, thoughtful, melancholic. A doe behind him recalls his mother, Sadhbh, and the white horse lying in front of him is the memory of Niamh and Tír na nÓg. Oisín, in the middle, is separated from everything by time, he belongs neither to the fast-moving time of the earth, nor to the eternity of Tír na nÓg.

Oisín is lost. When he returns to Ireland, the country still exists, but his companions, the Fianna, have disappeared. He finds no one capable of recognising his Ireland and its stories, the world has changed too much. In the Acallam na Senórach, Oisín and Cáilte become the survivors of an age whose dead, stories and places they recount. They are the ones who allow the stories to circulate, they pass on the memory of people and periods that are truly over.

For me, this form of grief connects with certain experiences linked to migration, even if I make this comparison carefully, because leaving to live in another country is obviously not comparable to the disappearance of one’s entire community. We can build a real life elsewhere, love new places, create relationships and become someone we would not have been if we had stayed. And yet, when we return, we do not find the life we left behind. People have continued without us, relationships have changed, the places too are sometimes barely recognisable, or have changed meaning for the people who live there.

We then become like Oisín, we are strangers everywhere, caught between two worlds to which we do not completely belong.

For people who leave behind a country at war, who flee a genocide, who leave a deeply destabilised country, the comparison is even more striking.

Perhaps this way of looking at it can also make those who welcome them, those who live in the Tír na nÓgs of the modern world, more aware of the sense of being torn apart, of the difficulty experienced by some migrants.

Artworks:

• Oscar, watercolor & metallic gold leaf, 30x30cm, 2026 (prints: https://thechickenleggedshop.etsy.com/ie/listing/4539620010/giclee-print-hand-gilded-oscar)

• Oisín, watercolor & metallic gold leaf, 30x30cm, 2026 (prints: https://thechickenleggedshop.etsy.com/ie/listing/4505056628/giclee-print-hand-gilded-oisin)

But we quickly realise one thing: in these stories, there is no single deity bringing together every form of grief, with a clearly defined role and precise gestures to perform in order to accept the loss and continue.

Instead, we find characters faced with very different situations: a mother mourning her son who died in battle, a sister gathering and categorising the plants that grew on her brother’s grave, a man who returns home and discovers that everyone he knew has disappeared. Elsewhere, the memory of a dead woman become inscribed in a landscape, or in an event that becomes cyclical, marking a season. Grief is therefore everywhere, but each story carries it differently.

We also have to keep in mind that the texts available to us are not the intact transcription of an ancient Irish religion. The stories were copied and probably heavily modified in medieval Christian manuscripts, sometimes long after the period during which they first began to circulate. And since the medieval period, these stories have been rewritten and adapted, they exist in versions that do not always agree with one another. This instability is part of Irish mythology as it has reached us, it forces us to give up the idea of an original narrative that we could recover in a perfectly preserved state, but it also allows us to see how myths evolve to correspond to new way of thinking.

My paintings are necessarily part of this history of transformations. I work from texts from different periods, I pay attention to what they say, to what they do not say, and all of this through my contemporary perspective. I am not trying to reconstruct an ancient scene as if I could know exactly what it meant to the people who first told it. What interests me instead is what my contemporaries see in these myths, how they enter into dialogue with them, how these stories accompany them through life. Grief makes this process particularly visible, because it always contains several temporalities: there is the loss, and then everything the living must continue to do with this absence.

Ingin Baidbi, Waiting for Death

In a late version of Oidheadh Con Culainn, Cú Chulainn meets a very pale young woman beside a ford. She is lamenting while washing and wringing out his clothes and equipment, which are covered in blood.

She is identified by Cathbad, chief of the druids, as ingin Baidbi, an expression that can be translated as “daughter of Badb”, a vague expression of which we find no further trace in other Irish stories. Today, we come across many writings that identify this presence directly as Badb or the Morrígan. For my part, I chose to keep the expression “daughter of Badb” so as not to assimilate her directly with the now very popular presences of the Morrígan or Badb.

I also chose the pose from Kay Nielsen’s famous illustration, “And then she lay on a little green patch in the midst of the gloomy thick wood”, because the sadness that comes from this image is so deep, so out of reach, that I found it very suitable for illustrating this very particular moment of the certainty of death and the powerlessness that comes with it. I also chose to take some liberties with the washing motif, leaving only a red trace beneath the character. The ravens and the wolf accompany her, showing that the impossibility of communicating certain things does not prevent a caring presence.

The play of light created on the gilding adds movement, I like the paradox, the scene looks completely frozen, like what we can feel at the moment of grief, time seems suspended, and yet time passes, and neither this feeling of suspension nor the lamentation will be able to save Cú Chulainn.

It was therefore this knowledge of the death that is coming that interested me in this motif. Ingin Baidbi mourns a man who is still alive, within this strange space where the loss has begun even though death has not yet arrived. Today, this is what we call the experience of anticipatory grief, when we continue to live with someone who is seriously ill and anticipate the end of this life, the sick person’s life, but also the life we share with him.

This experience can also take on a collective dimension in conflicts, wars, colonial situations, or in the exploitation of populations, animals and places. In these situations, it is not change itself that is mourned, it is the loss of lives, places, social bonds and the possibility of a future. The pain accompanies what still exist, but not for much longer.

This painting touched people, and I received quite a number of personal accounts of grief, from people who found in the story and in the image something they had experienced themselves.

I found this really, really interesting because it allows us to observe how a mythological figure can acquire a new function, here that of accompanying people through grief, when they encounter in her story something that seems to correspond to their own experience.

Artwork:

• Ingin Baidbi, Badb's Daughter, watercolor & metallic gold leaf, 30x30cm, 2026 (prints: https://thechickenleggedshop.etsy.com/ie/listing/4549113187/giclee-print-hand-gilded-ingin-baidbi)

I’ve been thinking about a small participatory installation for my upcoming exhibition, and I would really love some of you to be part of it.

My work looks at Irish mythology as something that is still moving through the world, not only in books or old manuscripts, but through people. Stories travel, they change, they become attached to places, relationships, struggles, identities and moments in our lives.

So I would love to hear about your own relationship with an Irish myth, story or figure.

It could be an anecdote, a memory, something you have always loved in a particular story, or simply a few words about why one figure has stayed with you. Perhaps a myth helped you through something, challenged you, made you feel seen, or became part of your spiritual or creative life. Perhaps you discovered it in a completely unexpected place.

You don’t need to be Irish, to live in Ireland, or to have any family connection with Ireland. I really mean that. I’m interested in the many different ways these stories find people, wherever they happen to be.

Selected words will become part of the exhibition itself. I’ll place short anonymous extracts in small brass frames among the paintings, sometimes with a feather or another small object. There will be no names, just the words.

I hope this part of the exhibition will show that myths are not simply stories preserved from the past. They continue to circulate, and people continue to carry them into their lives, their questions, their identities, their spirituality and their struggles.

You can send me something by private message or by email at [adresse]. A few sentences are plenty, and there is no need to write anything formal or polished.

Please only send something you would be comfortable having displayed publicly without your name. I may shorten it slightly to fit the frame, but I will contact you before printing it so you can approve the final extract.

Please add:

I am happy for an anonymous extract from this message to be included in the exhibition.

I would be so grateful to hear from you. ❤️

Because my studio space is quite limited, I suggested creating six separate panels. Once framed and hung with a little space between them, they will form a single composition of the desired size while remaining manageable to paint and transport.

For obvious reasons of privacy, I’ll leave aside the personal conversations that led to this commission. Those belong to the commissioner.

What I can share is the creative process that followed once we had settled on Danu as a subject, the research, the symbolism, the visual choices, and the story I hope the finished piece will tell.

Danu quickly emerged as the right choice.

I wanted a mythological figure through whom I could explore empowerment, motherhood, femininity, transformation, grief, resilience, and self-determination.

The challenge is that we know remarkably little about Danu herself. She is one of those figures who leaves a great deal of space for reinterpretation, which is perhaps why she continues to inspire so many people today.

She is often understood as a mother goddess, a presence woven into the Irish landscape itself. The Paps of Anu in County Kerry, whose shape evokes a pair of breasts. The Shannon estuary, connected through tradition to Sionna and Boann, goddesses of wisdom who are sometimes described as drawing their knowledge from Danu, the source of wisdom itself. Toberaune in County Offaly, known as Danu’s Well. The River Liffey, whose name has been associated with life and vitality.

Life. Wisdom. Landscape.

As an artist working with Irish mythology, that already gives me an extraordinary foundation.

One thing that has often frustrated me is the way some female figures have been represented in later retellings. Through a lens that separates matter from spirit, body from meaning, they sometimes become passive symbols of territory waiting for a ruler to claim them.

Yet that is not how many contemporary practitioners, devotees, and storytellers speak about them.

The people I have encountered who feel a connection to these figures describe something very different. They speak of active beings, figures of knowledge and intention, beings connected to the living world, to memory, to spirits, to transformation. They are not princesses waiting for a prince.

Because this commission revolves around themes of empowerment and personal transformation, I found myself drawn to the evolution of Danu as a visual metaphor.

This is the structure that gradually emerged.

The first panel shows Danu asleep within the landscape. The hills, rivers and earth cover her like a garment. She is already an adult figure, but she rests in a fetal position, full of possibility.

In the second panel, she begins to awaken. She remains reclined, but the fetal posture has opened. The distinction between herself and the landscape becomes slightly clearer.

By the third panel, Danu stands fully awake and fully conscious. She is powerful and self-possessed. She wears rivers and forests, but this is no longer something imposed upon her. It is a choice. The landscape becomes an expression of who she is rather than a role assigned to her.

In the fourth panel, Danu is pregnant. She reclines gently, supported by the living world around her. A raven appears throughout all six panels. A traveller between worlds, it carries memories of what has passed beyond sight. It witnesses, accompanies, and offers comfort during moments of transition.

In the fifth panel, Danu has become an elder. She has lived through joy, grief, change and experience. These things have left their marks, but she appears peaceful.

In the sixth and final panel, she rests once more. Not as she did in the beginning, but as a wise and powerful Crone figure, ready to guide others towards their own knowledge and understanding.

As for colour, blues and greens naturally dominate the palette, accompanied by ochres, siennas and soft pinks. I work extensively with supergranulating watercolours, whose textures create beautiful organic effects that feel particularly suited to landscape and mythology.

The strongest contrasts will appear in the central panels, where Danu is most fully present and active.

The gilding will be done with genuine gold leaf.

Gold appears frequently in my work because it allows me to borrow visual language from sacred art. Not to prescribe belief, but to highlight the importance of choice, freedom, dignity, and respect for the experiences of others.

As the drawings progress, I’ll share a few photographs of the process.

For now, I’ll leave you with my first painting of Danu.

Danu, Watercolor & gold leaf, 100% cotton paper, 20x20cm, 2024.

I left university a little too quickly for my own liking. There’s a sense of something unfinished, and despite the fatigue, I feel like I’m finally starting to have a few interesting things to say.

Ouch, don’t leave just yet! I’m not about to write an academic book! I promise, it’ll be accessible.

My exploration, through art, of themes such as identity, memory, culture, patriarchy... has inevitably given me a lot to think about. And through my practice, I don’t just research myths, I am interested above all in how those myths live for you.

I love talking with you, listening to you tell me what matters to you, which aspects of a story speak to you, which anecdotes stay with you. Of course, I’m delighted when someone tells me I’ve got it right with a painting.

But I also love it when you anticipate.

“If you ever paint Sadbh, don’t paint her as a doe, that’s a form that was forced upon her, she doesn’t like it.”

Those comments are so precious.

They encourage me not to take the easy route, and to ask questions about the place of a myth in the present day.

If painting has long been the world’s gaze upon its subject, then I’m quite happy for the subject’s gaze to take up its full place as well.

So with every character I paint, I ask myself questions about violence, about what is endured, about what is loved. I try to find the spaces of freedom that allow me to represent a character who may still have choices.

Sometimes that comes through the choice of age. For some, youth feels right. For others, old age. It also comes through placing much of what is imposed upon them by their story onto their clothing: symbols, animals, sovereignty, royalty, transformation...

Clothing is something that can easily be changed. In that way, what appears on the clothing belongs first and foremost to the clothing itself. The character keeps a space of freedom. They can still change.

I think this is one of the questions that has been running through my work for a long time: what happens when we change our point of view? What do we discover when we stop looking at mythological figures as fixed characters and begin to see them as beings who might still have choices of their own?

“Boann, choosing Wisdom”, watercolor & gold leaf on 100% cotton paper, 30x30cm, 2025.

https://thechickenleggedshop.etsy.com/listing/4348508254