Image Magazine

 by Sarah Gill

09th Sep 2026

“Being an artist is not simply about having ideas or talent. It is about returning to the work,” says Irish artist, teacher and retreat host Róisín O’Farrell. “Confidence comes from doing, not from waiting to feel certain.”

Roisin O’Farrell paints welly boots, light filled interiors and landscapes in between leading retreats in Ireland, Malta and Rwanda. Her mother is also an artist but initially Roisin followed another path, not believing in her own artistic talents. She graduated as a veterinary nurse and then built a career in marketing. In the early 1990s, she created a liberal arts festival bringing together art, music, comedy and politics and finally in her 30s she went back to art and has been painting and exhibiting ever since.

Was a career as an artist something you always aspired to? Tell us about your path to where you are today.

Not in any straightforward way. I grew up surrounded by artists. My mother, Patricia, is an artist, and creativity was simply the water we swam in. You might think that made becoming an artist easy, but it did not. I knew what good art looked like. Producing it myself? A different matter altogether, and yeah, my inner critic was extremely vocal from the start.

I took the long way round. I trained in veterinary nursing, worked in London, returned to Ireland, ran a business and later worked in marketing and customer relations. Alongside that, I was always drawn to teaching, communication and bringing people together.

The real turning point came in my thirties, when the company I worked for went under, and my nana died at 96. She had rediscovered life in her seventies, travelled widely in her eighties and published her first short stories late in life. She taught me it was never too late to start anything.

I decided to paint every day, as though painting was already my job, and see where it would take me. More than twenty years later, I exhibit and sell through galleries and art fairs in Ireland and internationally. I also teach and lead creative retreats in Ireland, Malta and Rwanda. By no means a straight line to where I am today, but none of it was wasted.

What is your process when creating a new work?

I begin by paying attention. It means stopping in the middle of a busy day to notice the way the light is falling in a room or along a stretch of coastline. That’s harder than it sounds in busy life. Learning to notice the character of a worn chair beside a window, the heat held in an old stone wall, or the way the same mountain can look completely different after rain.

I take photographs, make notes, work in my art journal and sometimes sketch, but I am not trying to reproduce a scene exactly. I am looking for the feeling underneath it.

In the studio, I work in oils, largely with a palette knife. I establish the composition first, then work quickly in lavish, textured paint, allowing glimpses of what lies underneath to surface in places. I like a painting to retain the evidence of its making.

My interiors and landscapes are connected by the same concerns: place, memory, comfort and belonging. A room holds the life lived inside it. A landscape holds weather, history and our own experience of passing through it.

My recent landscapes have become more expressive and abstracted. I am less interested in describing every detail and more interested in what colour, shape and texture can carry.

Who is someone you look up to in the realm of Irish art?

I think the whole country mourned the loss of Glen Hansard, and he was someone I admired since I was 20. Glen made culture feel open and shared rather than distant or exclusive. Whether he was performing on a major stage or busking on a Dublin street, there was a sense that everyone was invited in.

I admire artists who build serious, sustained careers without making art feel like a closed world. Glen lived and breathed the belief that creativity belongs to all of us, and that making art enriches not only the artist but the wider community.

What has been the highlight of your career so far?

There have been many moments that mattered. The first time I saw my work in a gallery. Exhibiting internationally. Meeting someone who has lived with one of my paintings for years and hearing what it has come to mean to them.

Being named IBAM Chicago’s Visual Artist of the Year in 2023 was a very special moment. To be recognised alongside people such as Colm Tóibín was, in itself, a huge highlight.

But ultimately, the real highlight is probably the life I have been able to build around art.

To be able to support my family by doing work that challenges and rewards me is something I feel incredibly lucky about. I get to make work, exhibit internationally, teach, travel and create meaningful creative experiences for other women.

The deeper achievement is that art has become the organising force of my life.

What is one thing you wish everyone knew about working as an artist?

That inspiration is only a small part of it. There are wonderful days when you are in the flow. There are also days spent looking, waiting, doing accounts, answering emails and wondering whether you have temporarily forgotten how to paint.

Being an artist is not simply about having ideas or talent. It is about returning to the work. Confidence comes from doing, not from waiting to feel certain.

There is courage involved too. You make something privately, often without knowing whether it really works, and then you send it out into the world, where anyone may have an opinion. You need a strange combination of sensitivity and toughness.

The work matters enormously, but you cannot grip it too tightly. You have to care deeply and still be willing to let it go.

What would you say to a budding artist unsure of their next steps?

Go ahead and make it… Just make something. We can lose a great deal of time trying to solve our whole future before returning to the act of creating. Do I need to go to art school? Should I approach a gallery? Do I have a style? Am I good enough? What should I post? Those questions may matter, but none of them can replace making the work.

Finish things. Finished is more useful than perfect because every completed piece teaches you something about the next one. Take your work seriously, but do not make it so precious that you become frightened of it. Learn your materials, look closely at good art and find people who will encourage you. Then make the next thing.

Róisín O’Farrell’s life in culture

The last thing I saw and loved… I recently saw a show in Malta of Reggie Burrows Hodges’s new work at the Malta International Contemporary Art Space. They were large, I mean huge, dramatic and abstracted, painted in acrylic and pastel on black grounds. I loved the way the images appeared to emerge from the darkness. The black felt active rather than empty, giving the paintings a sense of memory, mystery and restraint. They were deeply considered but still very much alive. You could feel both the intelligence and the instinct behind them.

The book I keep coming back to… The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver. I first read it about 25 years ago, when I was a new mum. At the time, it helped me understand something about the strength of mothers making difficult choices, often alone. I returned to it more recently, after spending time in Africa over the past five years, and found a different book waiting for me. It helped me think more honestly about my own relationship with Africa, and about the complexity of arriving in another place carrying your own assumptions. The writing is rich and powerful, and every character is beautifully drawn. I could read it again and again as it seems to find me at different stages of my life.

I find inspiration in… Music, film, painting, novels, theatre, good conversation and the natural world. In other words, the world around me is full of inspiration.

My favourite film is… I am going to say The Quiet Girl. I loved its restraint, its tenderness and the way so much is held in silence. That said, Call Me by Your Name, The Last of the Mohicans and The Siege of Jadotville would all be favourites, for entirely different reasons.

The song I listen to to get in the zone is… Wow, do I really have to choose just one? Can I cheat and say… The Gloaming, Paul Brady, The Avett Brothers, Glen Hansard, Iron and Wine, and a host of others. Although, in truth, what I listen to depends on the painting. Some paintings need music. Others need complete silence.

The last piece of work I recommended is… Intermezzo by Sally Rooney. I loved this. Loved, loved, loved it. I think it might be my book of the year and possibly the best thing she’s written. Two things she does that I haven’t seen done quite like this before. The first is sex scenes. So beautifully real. Intimate in the truest sense. Could only have been written by a woman. The second is grief. Messy. Individual. Completely non-linear. Not the tidy arc we’re supposed to move through but the chaotic, surprising, deeply personal thing it really is. Seriously, read it.

I never leave the house without… My phone and my keys. That’s it! I don’t like handbags, and I’m likely to leave it behind anyway.

The performance I still think about is… MÁM by Tea? Da?sa. Choreographed by Michael Keegan-Dolan, it brought together a group of fearless dancers with the live music of virtuoso concertina player Cormac Begley. It summoned up a whirlwind of myth, ritual, wildness and magic. It blew my tiny head off. I have been to everything Tea? Da?sa has done since. Watch out for them.

The best advice I’ve ever received… Do the work. It is not glamorous advice, but it has served me well. When I am uncertain, overwhelmed or distracted by what everyone else appears to be doing, the answer is usually to return to the painting in front of me.

The art that means the most to me is… The art that becomes part of ordinary life. I love museums and important public works, but I am also deeply moved by paintings that live in people’s homes. A painting becomes part of breakfasts, arguments, celebrations, grief and quiet afternoons. It watches a family change. There is something extraordinary about art being present for all of that.

The most challenging thing about being an artist is… Remaining open. Once people recognise your work, there can be a temptation to keep giving them what they already know. But a living practice has to continue changing. You have to allow yourself not to know what you are doing for a while. That’s uncomfortable, particularly when the earlier work has been successful, but it is often where the most interesting work begins.

If I wasn’t an artist, I would be… Perhaps an interior designer, or someone who spends an unreasonable amount of time working with colour and moving chairs around. Or possibly a writer.

The magic of art to me is… That it changes how we pay attention. Art asks us to stop in front of something we might otherwise pass by. A familiar room. A family’s boots at the back door. A bend in the coastline. A patch of colour. Another person’s experience. Making art has changed how I see the world, but it has also changed how I live within it. It has made me more observant, more curious and more willing to stay with uncertainty. I do not believe creativity is a luxury. It is a sustaining force. That, to me, is the magic of it.

Róisín O’Farrell brings together abstracted landscapes from Ireland and Malta with richly painted interiors in a new exhibition exploring place, memory and belonging. The artist will paint live at The Doorway Gallery on Culture Night, September 18, and will share a solo exhibition at the gallery from September 14-20.