The pufferfish is an extremely rare visitor to our south coast, with only seven of this species found in Irish waters in the past 100, years two of them in Ardmore.

This portrait of a museum specimen, Intrepid Traveller (Oil on canvas 33x33cm framed) is a homage to a pufferfish, tracking the narrative of this unique visitor from the warm seas of the south Atlantic to Ardmore in 1852, and his subsequent onward journey to the Natural History Museum (Dead Zoo) in Dublin.

Born in Dublin in 1976, then living in the Waterford Gaeltacht, Leah Murphy graduated from Crawford College of Art & Design, with BA in Fine Art Painting in 1997. She exhibits her work regularly in group and solo exhibitions in Ireland and Italy and is involved in collaborative and community-based art projects.

Short listed for the inaugural Sir William Orpen Self Portrait Prize in 2025, her work forms part of Waterford Municipal Collection.