Cornelia O’Donovan plays with old folklore and poetry, but in a loose and dreamlike way. She draws particularly on tales native to the British Isles, and especially Celtic poetry and myth – from the tale of Prince Llewellyn’s grief at the sacrifice of his greyhound Gellert being, to the figurative ballads of Ellen O’Leary and lines from WB Yeats.

Her paintings are flat, stripped of all perspective or realism, their surfaces hazy and meandering like an old tale retold a thousand times. Roughly rendered yet delicately arranged, she creates patterned compositions reminiscent of old tapestries into which she plants naïve pre-Modern motifs.

When I was a child, my sister and I would spend days making paper cardboard houses, sometimes villages – using toothpaste lids to make light bulbs, scraps of fabric for curtains, making interior worlds. That feeling never left me and still today I work with the idea of making something from nothing. It is fascinating, entirely insular and personal, but speaks of today and time and is a female voice.  The first drawings and scribbles are stiff, then after I am relaxed enough, they  begin to be playful. I work without judging or editing and it seems to pour out. I find the process of setting up, layering colour down, cutting up and arranging shapes totally absorbing. The time I spend working is a complete other world, a time to reflect and map out dreams, nightmares, my fears and obsessions. The images sometimes repeat themselves, playing out different roles and interpreting the same meaning again and again – images from the stories I collect, my own and other people’s lives from film, paintings, poems and myths.’

‘Outlines of old figures, ancient heralds, esoteric herbs and familiar animals all appear like inherited objects worn smooth by the touch of innumerable hands. They retain the homespun quality of medieval rustic artworks, flowing across the canvas like a stroll through a country garden.’ James Freeman 2013

Cornelia O’Donovan trained at Royal College of Art graduating in 2006. Her work is held in private collections in the U.K. and overseas. She lives and works in London.