Lyrical Intensity | Text written by Aidan Dunne

Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh’s painterly world doesn’t obviously incorporate people. That is, she is not a figurative artist in the conventional sense. But the individual human being, and how that being relates to the wider community, is at the absolute centre of her concerns. From early on in her work, ideas of the inclusive community, of common purpose and common ground, have animated her vision. It is as though her paintings respond to an implicit question: How do we, individually and collectively, ethically inhabit the world in which we find ourselves?

Her title for this series of new paintings, Snaidhm, or Knot, indicates obliquely where she is coming from. Previous bodies of work have similarly used single-word, metaphorically rich Irish titles. Immediately prior to the Knots, the Snáithe or Thread series, derived its title from a conversation with a friend who showed her a graphic sign comprising three Ss threaded together. It immediately visualised for the artist how the apparently distinct strands or threads of her work are in fact fundamentally interconnected.
The intersecting threads might be, for example, the individual, the wider community, and the environment in which they live. That is certainly the case with the Knots. The psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan visualised the individual human consciousness as a knot, a densely tangled interface of inward being and external relations. It is a view that accords comfortably with Ní Mhaonaigh’s use of the term. In the paintings, we see that people make structures, be they symbolic or physical, and these structures can be beautiful or destructive, in harmony with the world that nature made or in denial of it. For the artist, though, the basic human potential for creation harbours Utopian possibilities, despite evident flaws, setbacks and failures. It is for her a glorious potential that she celebrates anew with each painting.

Sinéad Ní Mhaonaigh (b 1977) is an artist based in County Wicklow. She graduated with an MA in Fine Art from Limerick School of Art and Design in 2023, and a BA in Fine Art from Dublin Institute of Technology in 2001. In 2025, Ní Mhaonaigh was elected President of the Royal Hibernian Academy, having served as an Academician since 2023. She was elected a member of Aosdána in 2024.

Recent solo exhibitions include Sruth (2025) at An Gailearaí and Regional Cultural Centre; and Bailiúchan(2025) at The Hunt Museum. Ní Mhaonaigh’s work has been presented at major international art fairs, including VOLTA New York, Art Market Budapest, Art Rotterdam, and VOLTA Basel. Her paintings are held in many important public collections, including including The Irish Museum of Modern Art (Dublin), The Arts Council of Ireland (Dublin), Centre Culturel Irlandais (Paris), Ernesto Ventós (Barcelona), and O’Brien Art Collection (Chicago), as well as private collections across Ireland, Europe, and America.

A substantial publishing archive has developed around Ní Mhaonaigh’s painting practice over the years, with her exhibitions attracting significant media coverage, as well as critical and scholarly engagement through the inclusion of her work in a vast range of catalogues, books, journals, and periodicals. Ní Mhaonaigh is often invited to deliver public lectures or participate in conferences, and she is a regular contributor to Irish language broadcasting across radio and television.