Mary Veronica Sweeney

Each time I take the brush to a gessoed panel or canvas, I am playing with narratives. Which do I espouse? The academic? The mythologic? The spiritual? The psychological? The post-modern? Where does gravity hold me? In the confluence of it all! The complexity of late 20th century reality and its absence of any master narrative (other than a shared quest for narratives) greatly interests me.

As a figurative painter, I am moved by the pictorial's participation in the narrative of history. Invoking diverse paradigms, from Irish narrative traditions to postmodern theory, my work explores nature and the value of historical referents for creating contemporary meaning. As a painter, I tremble at the junctures between the known and the imaginable, the certainty and uncertainty of being human.