Ann Dunphy explains: This painting titled Ottilie Mixed media on board 55x59cm is named after my daughter, is grounded in experiences of childhood spent in and around water — not as a singular place, but as a familiar and recurring environment. It draws on time shaped by play, movement, and attention to shifting surfaces. What remains is less a clear image and more a set of impressions that continue to surface over time.

Working in layered paint, I allow forms to emerge and dissolve repeatedly. Figures appear but resist clarity, caught between recognition and abstraction. This process reflects the nature of memory — unstable, overlapping, and often contradictory. The central figure moves within a landscape that is neither fully real nor imagined, surrounded by gestures that suggest lily pads, reflections, tides and submerged spaces without settling into fixed meaning.

Colour plays a central role in this negotiation between past and present. Saturated pinks and greens push against cooler tones, creating a tension between immediacy and distance. Warmer hues carry a sense of bodily presence and energy, while cooler passages open out into quieter, more reflective space. Built through successive layers, the painting holds traces of earlier marks beneath its surface, allowing different moments to coexist. In this way, colour becomes a way of holding memory — not as something fixed, but as something that shifts, accumulates, and resurfaces.

Ann Dunphy gratuated from Crawford College of Art & Design, Cork with Homs BA Fine Art in 2000 followed by a H.Dip in Education in 2001, and a Masters in Fine Art at Cardiff Metropolitan University, Wales in 2004.

Her solo exhibitons include The Wheel House Gallery, Oakham, Rutland UK, The Old Market House Arts Centre, Dungarvan, Waterford Crystal Showrooms Waterford and Joan Clancy Gallery.

She has exhibited in many group shows in Ireland and UK. Her work is held in many important collections including the OPW, Wateford Council, Cork Opera House, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern. She received the RDS Taylor Award in 2000, and a Residency in Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Co Monaghan from Waterford Council in 2001.