My education in sculpture really began with my earliest makings and drawings as a child; but in the more formal sense, my training was at the National College of Art And Design, Dublin, from 1980 to 1984, resulting in an honours diploma in Fine Art Sculpture. Public commissions have been the main focus of my work, and my large-scale outdoor works are to be seen in Tipperary, Cavan, Limerick, Wexford, Leitrim and Dublin. I have also created sculptures during symposia in France and Spain, as well as here in Ireland. I began teaching night classes in stone carving in Dublin in the early 1990s, having spent a couple of years working on the restoration of the Custom House in the city. I was then recruited as assistant course tutor on the sculpture technicians training programme at the Fire Station Artists Studios. The demand for these skills was such that we began teaching Arts graduates, and this programme formed the core of the teaching ethos which I helped deliver at the Leitrim Sculpture Centre from 1995 to 2003.

I have been living in Leitrim since 1995. The incentive to move to what was then a forgotten county came from long-time friend and colleague, Jackie McKenna, a Manorhamilton native. The rationale was that our combined forces would result in something momentous for the visual arts in Leitrim, and sure enough we went on to found the Leitrim Sculpture Centre, now a thriving hub for artists across a wide range of disciplines. Leitrim was then a place of almost infinite possibilities, and although the rapid pace of development has in many ways actually narrowed the options for incoming artists, the presence of organisations such as the Sculpture centre and the Leitrim Design House ensures a central role for visual artists in the cultural life of the county.