Trish O'Shea United Kingdom
Originally from North Yorkshire, I gained a degree in Fine Art Printmaking at Sheffield Hallam in 1983 and made Sheffield my home. My career as an artist and educator spans over thirty years and I have worked in as a solo practitioner and collaboratively in film, photography, performance/spoken word, text, installation, 3D.
I have been painting and making sculptures at the same time (but in different spaces) and I am now more focused on my 3D work and intend to develop drawings and film along side and within my sculptures.
My sculptures of figures, birds and structures explore the fragility and vulnerability of the environment, and hence of ourselves. I try to explore and evoke a sense of things being out of kilter and unbalanced…things toppling. Each sculpture is created in a process of piecing together different materials collected and found. They are not planned beforehand…I begin, and they slowly emerge instinctively. They incorporate family heirlooms and objects and are made from an assemblage of materials that come to hand in my studio. Making something out of seemingly nothing. I believe they reflect how many of us are trying to piece things together, make sense of things, how we are often making things up as we go along. My paintings are in response to the natural environment and I use oils, acrylics, oil sticks, pencil and charcoal and create rich layers of colour, marks, and textures. The work depicts different environments and also tries to capture a ‘sense’ of them, such as changing light, weather, atmosphere and movement. I also represent internal imagined spaces, which I often find and move into when in nature. One painting can incorporate different places, views, times and memory and reflect the sense of moving within landscapes, woodlands and valleys
