Virginia Mallon

“There is no foreign land. It is the traveler only that is foreign.”

Robert Louis Stevenson

 

This photograph was the inspiration for this series in paint.  Only discovered in early 2021, it revealed the ghosts of  Irish American relatives I never knew existed. Their story began in the late 1800s, when an Irish immigrant family arrived on America’s shore fleeing the “Great Hunger” only to find themselves caught up in the violent end of the Civil War.

 

It is about a large family who lived hard, heartbreaking, and harrowing lives. Each generation plagued with trauma, abuse, death, and addiction. Although I did not know of their existence until 2021, I immediately recognized the faces of these ghosts as one of my own. 

 

This body of work uses both traditional and not so traditional portraiture to come to terms with with a secret legacy growing from Celtic roots.