De Chirico said "one must find the demon in everything" and "one must discover the eye in everything" , I am neither exotic or foreign but the world I inhabit strikes me as being a strange place often on the edge of revealing a darker or brighter truth.

I collect old toys, discarded things, and listen to what they have to say to me, trying to find the demon and the story within them, the process of collection triggering themes based on my childhood and experience of growing up with the feeling of being an observer and outsider disconnected from the mainstream of society, a feeling which stays with me to this day.

I make stage sets on which I allow my imagination and the objects collected to act out their dramas based on an enquiry into my own past or that which the objects suggest, I try to listen to the voices that they might have, the paintings are a record of these plays.

If what you want from my work is words or an easy explanation that suddenly reveals meaning and allows you to move on to the next piece in a haze of " ah i get it", without looking at the work Im not giving you that. Visual work does not need the mediation of description to validate it, it works or it doesnt, and we find what we find there in the medium in which the search was intitiated.

The only thing I can give you is a title, the only description is within the work itself, if you cannot find it there then I have failed , and thats the only criteria that matters, that and painting.

Also Check out the work of Cathriona Cleary at  http://www.cathrionacleary.com/  I like the way she works and the things that are hidden in her paintings.

I use open-source software for the creation of digital content and for archiving, Linux is my operating system of choice, The gimp for photoediting and manipulation and openoffice for writing , thunderbird for email ( for video and sound editing try ubuntu studio) check out the issues and links at www.FSF.org .

You can email me at info@iankeaveny.com