Spectres of Phoenix Park (2025)

Acetate drypoint print series and artist’s book, presented at Dublin Art Book Fair 2025.

Spectres of Phoenix Park is a series of acetate drypoint prints exploring trees as witnesses, repositories and haunted presences within the landscape. Developed from encounters with trees in Dublin’s Phoenix Park, the works consider how place can hold traces of memory, history and human experience.

Printed using the à la poupée technique, multiple colours are applied directly to a single plate, creating images that shift between bodily form, natural structure and apparition. Branches, roots and textured bark emerge through layered, uncertain marks, suggesting figures that are simultaneously present and disappearing.

The series reflects an ongoing interest in folklore, memory and the spectral qualities of the Irish landscape. Rather than depicting trees as passive features, the works approach them as living archives—forms that endure, absorb and quietly bear witness to what has passed around them.