Major Project: Desire and Rapture – The sea as place in the work of Dorothy Cross


A narrative investigation charting manifestations of the sea forms the point of entry into my study of the work of the Irish artist Dorothy Cross. Part-conversation with the artist, part-encounter with the landscape and part-journey to the meeting point where the land meets the sea, this narrative is the foundation for two accompanying critical essays. Both essays form a parallel investigation into her art and into what the sea might mean to an artist who seems to live a dual existence on water and land. They also form a record of what has been said on a cliff-top studio on the Atlantic coast of Connemara on a windswept day in winter.


Cross has created haptic meanings for an elusive boundary, replacing what has often been considered as a void and an abyss with a physical reality that captures intense memory and emotion. This is achieved in a series complex collisions of different modes and fields – from video, photography and sculpture into opera, literature, maritime history and zoology. Cross, as I show, offers poetry and elegant logic.