Mags Duffy
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As long as there are leaves there will be trees -
It was neither an ordinary day, nor an extraordinary day
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The Hawthorn Shrine
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The place of lost words
Mags Duffy is a visual artist based at the Custom House Studios, Westport. She works across painting, textiles, photography and text. She has exhibited nationally and internationally. Her work is held in public and private collections, including the Office of Public Works, Mayo County Council, and the Department of the Environment, Northern Ireland. Alongside her studio work, Mags maintains a parallel practice in community arts engagement, spanning arts education, arts and health, and local community initiatives. Her work in both has been supported through commissions, bursaries, and training from the Arts Council of Ireland, Creative Ireland, Mayo County Council, Galway County Council, Shared Island Fund, Age & Opportunity, the Irish Hospice Foundation, Westport Family Resource Centre, the HSE and the Dept of the Environment N. Ireland.
"In my work I am interested in the particularity of place and in the stories held within landscapes, the way narratives, histories and memory fill a place with meaning and significance. Ideas of transcendence and personal geography also inform my work, shaping an interest in how place becomes emotionally charged through experience and association. My paintings explore the interaction of feelings and landscapes.
The drowned drumlin landscape of Clew Bay and the Carrowbeg River that feeds into it have shaped my work over the last number of years. These shifting watery landscapes, with their layered histories and changing boundaries, provide a starting point for exploring an intimacy with these places and a sense of embeddedness within them.
The process of painting, slow and deliberate, acts as a way of searching for something more transient like an indistinct presence. They are more than simply romanticised or observed landscapes, they are places that shift between the real and the unreal.
I use photographs, text, textiles, collage, and paint to build layered and textured images. Surfaces accumulate gradually and are then excavated through sanding, cutting and removal, revealing traces of earlier decisions beneath. I tend to work in series, developing multiple paintings simultaneously, allowing ideas and gestures to move between works. Through this process I search for a visual language that can hold the complexity of place and the emotional and narrative traces embedded within it."