BIOGRAPHY
As a young person I was always drawing and taking pictures. I was known and characterised from a young age as “the creative one”. My creativity has always been one of my favourite parts of myself and I was lucky to have that acknowledged and nurtured from childhood. I attribute much of where I have gotten in life to this.
The younger of my education was spent in the US. Having been in both a US and Irish school system, I had the opportunity to compare and contrast the different school pedagogies. One takeaway from my time in the American system was continuous assessment seems to allow for less rote learning and more cross disciplinary responses to learning.
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After finishing school, I somehow fell into a makeup career. It began as something I didn’t take very seriously, just a job I could excel at until I figured out my true passion. After a few years in the industry, it started to become clear to me that I could be very successful in makeup and that I already had found my first passion in life. I reveled in how technical yet creative it was as an art form. For me it wasn’t about materialistic beauty, it was about being creative within the client's brief. Getting them to a place where they were happy but trying something new, but also being impeccable with detail and finish.
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By twenty-four I had decided that I wanted to further progress my education. I had always been drawn to college but was unsure of exactly what I wanted to do with my life. I came to the decision that art college was the right starting point. A great advantage to LSAD is that the initial year is spent trying the different disciplines. Had I not had that first year to figure myself out I may have chosen photography as my discipline. Luckily, I attended a great lecture that year that highlighted the difference between artists and designers. It became clear to me that my love for function, organisation and a brief would be much better fulfilled in a design course.
I absolutely fell for graphic design. It was a turning point in my life for me to realise who I was. It combined so many things that I was passionate about. Art college was such a community and felt like the learning environment I always wanted. I think I was always hoping to find a singular passion, but in college I realised I was just at home in most creative environments. Graphic design was a great choice for this as it incorporates a vast array of skills into one discipline.
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By fourth year of college, I was able to officially set up my own makeup company and became self-employed. The beauty of having my own business was having the autonomy to work as hard as I could and reap the benefits. I was able to utilise my design and photography to market my business. This was the value of all my different skills accruing. It was then I began to realise I prefer to work across disciplines.
As I have gained success within my industry, I have begun to be offered more and more teaching opportunities in makeup. I now find more passion in these roles than the artistry itself. I have seen that teaching allows for further exploration into a subject matter. Understanding it at a deep enough level to discuss it with passion and at length.
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A few years after completing my undergraduate and in the middle of a pandemic, I began to wonder what my next move was going to be. I had been teaching makeup for the last few years in various ways and came to the conclusion that a career in Art education would be the an ideal direction to focus my passions towards. I applied and was fortunate enough to get accepted into the PME in the Limerick School of Art & Design. I have spent the last two year surprising myself with how much I could learn and evolve. My world has opened up so much to pedagogy and I have found an honest enthusiasm for it. Art teaching allows me to embrace multiple disciplines and bring even more creative learning to the classroom. It allows me to engage with psychology and research, which my Masters has helped me develop a big interest in. Ultimately, I realised I love having the opportunity to nurture creativity in young people. To help them better understand their own place in the world.