Ireland Exhibition 2023

Let Love Have the Last Word

In July, I graduated from the Notre Dame ECHO program in the McGrath Institute for Church Life, with an MA in Theology. Looking ahead, I will continue to paint landscapes while also learning byzantine iconography through a two year certificate program under the direction of George Kordis, an artist iconographer based in Athens, Greece. My journey to discover this deep conviction to work as an artist and iconographer began walking the cliffs on Inis Mór, the largest of the Aran islands, with staff from the Notre Dame Dublin Global Gateway in 2018. The beauty of the landscape and wonderful company helped me to see the potential of integrating theology and my work as an artist. The following year, I returned to Ireland to research, photograph and paint Irish Holy Wells, sites of Catholic pilgrimage, thanks to the inspiration of my mentor Mícheál Mac Craith and the sponsorship of the Irish Internship Program at the Dublin Global Gateway, UROP at Notre Dame, and the De Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. This research informed my thesis exploring Catholic popular piety at holy wells for my BA in Theology, as well as a group of 9 paintings.  Beginning August 23^rd, 2023, through August 28^th, three of my paintings of holy wells and Irish landscapes will be exhibited at the Dublin Global Gateway, O’Connell House on Merrion Square. This exhibition has been co-sponsored by the Notre Dame Dublin Global Gateway and the De Nicola Center for Ethics and Culture. 

At holy wells, springs where people come to pray, there are often 'stations' or places designated for people to stop and pray as they make the 'rounds,' (sets of prayers that are unique to the physical location and the saint to whom the well is dedicated). These rounds often include the "Our Father," "Hail Mary" and "Glory Be" prayers. In these paintings, I wonder at the profound 'imprints' of pilgrims in these places of prayer, nestled in the Irish landscape, as evidence of faith that runs through generations. During the research, I traveled Ireland for two months, photographing 26 holy wells from Dalkey Island off the East Coast, to Inis Mór off the west coast. As I traveled, I began to sense that I was being transformed, healed, and shaped through encounters with God and people who revealed God’s providence for me through their hospitality and love. To find any holy well, I usually needed a local guide and God’s grace. They are not easy to find as a foreign student, but as I set out, somehow, I found nearly every well that I intended to photograph. 

These holy wells seem to foster the dispositions of gratitude and an awareness of God’s presence. One might even venture to say that the visual evidence of pilgrims coming to these places over the course of hundreds of years is evidence that human persons long for God. This is especially clear because they leave evidence that people come to pray in these places especially in the midst of their suffering. On this journey I ventured to bring my own suffering to God as I experienced severe chronic illness throughout the course of the research, receiving a diagnosis of an autoimmune illness upon my return to the United States.

More recently, I have been learning and writing about Mary, the Mother of God. At holy wells, many people pray the rosary, a Marian devotion, or simply a couple of ‘Hail Mary’s.’ I have been exploring Our Blessed Mother’s disposition at the Annunciation, when the Angel Gabriel appeared to her as a messenger from God, seeking Mary’s consent to bear the Son of God into the world. Her love and trust in God’s goodness reveals to us that although the Cross is a reality we must accept living in a broken world, so is the Resurrection, when we do. This changes everything, and I have continued to seek to immerse myself and invite others into this reality through my artwork. In her book, “The Reed of God,” Caryll Houselander engages Mary’s familiar humanity as an entry point to the Mystery of God made man, encouraging us to open our hearts to the mystery and reality of Love that conquers death through Jesus Christ. At holy wells around Ireland, people reveal a childlike trust in God as they bring themselves authentically to prayer. This is the disposition of open, childlike seeking necessary to fruitfully engage the most difficult questions of our time. Houselander writes, “Indeed, the Architect of Love has built the door into heaven so low that no one but a small child can pass through it unless, to get down to a child’s little height, he goes in on his knees” (18-19). Through Mary’s yes to bear Christ into the world, we come to know the love of God who asked for death so that He could free us from it. In Christ, through Mary, we also know that death and suffering do not necessarily have the last word, but that Love can. Houselander writes, “He intended to overcome all this in each person’s life, not by doing away with it, but by transforming it; and to overcome death itself by dying…” (71). Houselander writes of Mary, “She rejoices because she knows that His will, to which they have surrendered, is that they should have life; that life will prevail in them, in each one of them; and that death is powerless against the risen Christ” (73). 

Brave pilgrims at holy wells in Ireland demonstrate firsthand what it is to let Love have the last word. In the midst of their suffering, they bring themselves to God in prayer. They allow Him whose Resurrection transformed death forever by invincible love, to live His life in them. Their suffering is transformed in the love of Christ’s Passion, Death and Resurrection that opens a way for eternal life with God. In this way, when each pilgrim chooses to trust in God and pray, Love really does have the last word.