Deirdre Keough Irish artist, Armagh

Irish artist Deirdre Keough, Armagh

Deirdre Keough is a Lurgan-based jeweller and painter, whose instincts for the creative agility of metal and mineral are complemented by an passion for portably immense skies. Growing up on the Highveld in South Africa, Keough immersed herself in the immense, unpredictable architecture of its clouds. Lying in a wheelbarrow, as a child, she would envisage herself walking among those clouds and nebulae. Throwing this sense of infinitely changeable space into her internal luggage, an adult Keough then brought it to her family's homeland in Ireland; a place of more condensed and nuanced skies.

Keough's work offers an insight into her instinctive response to space, mood, fluidity and longing. Her paintings create possibilities; interpretations of intimacy, comfort, immensity and unease.