Artist Mary O’Connor: ‘There is no such thing as an abstract painting’

Art: What Lies Beneath

Mary O’Connor's work is at So Fine Art Editions

Niall MacMonagle

Ten-year old Mary O’Connor, on a Wexford Arts Centre art trip, had “an amazing day out” at the National Gallery. “We studied a Rembrandt painting and I was in heaven.”

School had been a struggle. Though she remembers nothing from Leaving Cert art, “art was my happy place. Mother Ursula used to shuffle and mutter around the place. I always imagined that the nuns were lined up and randomly pointed at, ‘You go and be the art teacher.’”