EXHIBITIONS
2013 – Small Contemplations
Joint exhibition with Liz Cullinan
Percolator Gallery, Latrobe Terrace, Paddington, Brisbane, Queensland Australia
This exhibition includes Aengus’ work from the last 10 years. He has been painting in Ireland, Denmark, Germany, the Tanami Desert in the Northern Territory where he was artist in residence for eight months, the North Queensland Coast and in Brisbane. After completing degrees in science and architecture his interest was drawn to concepts of privacy versus community and for the next 10 years he worked in various supportive therapeutic residential communities. As a carer and a land-based artist, landscape architecture and sculpture informs his paintings. He has helped transform community spaces into therapeutic nurturing playground environments.
Aengus’ painting is in acrylics as well as oils, bees wax and pastels. The subject varies from landscapes, abstracts to portraits, and the material worked is mostly linen with some calico pieces.
His work as an artist has been a constant during his years working as a volunteer carer for people with special needs. As a farmer and gardener he loves contemplations of nature – exploring its colours and textures is soul food. Working as an expressive visual artist is an essential part of who he is. This exhibition will give you an insight into who he is and how he perceives the world.
2009 – Dancing Leaves
First Solo Painting Exhibition
Watergarden Camphill Café & Gallery, Co.Kilkenny Ireland
He trained his mind, his eyes, his soul to appreciate natural landscapes for the qualities they so reluctantly revealed. Returning to the same place day in, day out, he began to feel she was slowly revealing herself to him, experiences he wasn’t able to clarify, emerging, he wished with all his heart they would give him a deeper meaning to his ordinary life. He had read that the passing of energy from himself to the trees and birds was now being widely accepted as a reciprocal experience. He felt for this, with nature, with people, with everything surrounding him. It was not as fulfilling as he might have wished, but with concentration he could slowly immerse himself into the hillside, sitting for hours on the old log, as the hippies would say, becoming one with his surroundings.
How the pretence of modern science was prostituting nature into an amorphous mass of objects without meaning, without sensitivity, or a sense of the sublime. Nature and life was now described as profit. Even the organic and biodynamic farmers and gardeners were working with the soul and spirit energies of nature for profit through exploitation.
He felt obligated to transcend this world to find harmony in himself. He knew that the ordinary had to become a hidden beauty to be discovered again and again and again, everyday of his life, if he worked at developing his perceptive abilities. Andy Goldsworthy had inspired him to work with sensuous sympathy.
He would work on details in his paintings., on winds, breath, colour, shape on texture until, he hoped, they expressed a deep ecology, this search for the essence of our ordinary nature. What is deep ecology, he thought?
Does respecting and valuing life forces that are us and our surroundings constitute deep ecology. Does this celebrate the old oak tree in each of us, the ladybeetle or the butterfly in everyone of us. Can deep ecology instil in us a marriage of hope and love with all that we perceive in nature within ourselves. The separation experience so prevalent today he thought was due to an absence of meaningful experiences which relate to our inner being, to our spirits. If we are to make truer, deeper connections with ourselves, a clearer understanding of our true nature must begin with an immersion of ourselves in true nature, in the wilderness. When we embrace with our eyes and our hearts every moment that we breath that clean air, hear those pure sounds, where infinity re-emerges, then we are on a spirit path. Then we can truly find our individual soul and our essence, he thought.
EDUCATION
2009-2010 -Principles in Art Therapy Certificate course in the Principles of Art Therapy Cork Institute of Technology, Ireland
2005-2008 – Biodynamic Apprenticeship
Final Project Completion
2002 – Permaculture Design Course
Southern Cross Permaculture Institute
2001-2002 – Biodynamic Horticulture and Gardening Apprenticeship
Severn Valley, Watch Oak Farm, Sheiling Community, Thornbury
1990-1995 – Bachelor of Architecture
University of Queensland, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
1986-1988 – Bachelor of Applied Science
Queensland Institute of Technology, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
EMPLOYMENT
2014-present Employed at Schloss Bröllin Centre for the creative arts in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, north-west Germany.
Garden Designer and gardener (fruit, vegetable and herb gardens) carpenter, stone walling, building projects, property Management, landscaping.
2012- Artist in Remote Schools Program
Employed by Corrugated Iron Youth Arts. Education in Numeracy and Literacy for transition age children in Nyirripi Community.
Tanami Desert, NT
2009-2010 – Adapt, Adopt, Adept
Architecture & Landscaping Architecture. Design & Build Community Kindergarten Childrens Garden. Conservatory/Greenhouse.
Garden Terracing, stonewalls, BBQ & earth roof shelter
Co. Kilkenny, Ireland
2005-2010 – The Watergarden
Garden designer, Biodynamic gardener & special needs support worker.
Camphill Community Thomastown
Co.Kilkenny, Ireland
2003-2004 – Dunshane Camphill Community
Biodynamic horticultural worker and support worker for adolescents with special needs.
Naas, Kildare, Ireland
2002-2003 – Hohepa Children’s Community
Residential support worker for children with special needs.
Poraiti, Hastings, New Zealand
2001-2002 – Sheiling Camphill Community
Biodynamic horticultural worker and residential support worker for adolescents with special needs.
Thornbury, Gloucestershire, UK