I am a realist painter.
The inspiration for the current show comes from my childhood. My family would travel to Wicklow to visit Grandpa and other relatives, this was in the 50s and 60s when we also made regular epic trips to Kilkenny to visit Dad's side of the family. The journeys were long; no motorways then! We visited many interesting towns and petrol stations on our way, particularly during the summer holidays when we travelled further afield to Wexford, Waterford and West Cork.
Subconsciously these journeys lodged in my mind and many years later when I would get letters from home (I was living in Australia at the time), filling me in on weddings. Births and deaths etc. I could see quite clearly in my mind's eye the rural world of my childhood. It wasn't homesickness but a clear image of what I had left behind.
This exhibition captures some of that but also how we have moved on without destroying our rural vernacular architecture.
John Doherty, October 2023