A story is told of a man falling asleep on the side of a mountain and out of his open mouth emerges a butterfly. The butterfly flutters away to land on a nearby, sun-bleached, skull. Into it goes the butterfly seeking sanctuary. Sometime later the butterfly exits the skull and re-enters the sleeper by way of his parted lips. The man wakes up with a start declaring " I have just had a most wonderful dream in which I was wandering through an infinite palace of white marble."

Painting, while being a gesture of deep reverence towards the unfathomable, is also a journey into the sanctuary of mind. Landscape and mind being synonymous, landscape becomes the mind that is manifest so that we can see where we are going. Protected in the moment of becoming like  a seabird returning to the Saltee Islands or a Marsh Fritillary butterfly on the shoreline of Lough na Gabhair or a donkey, safely in sight of Carrowkeel.