Nuala O’Sullivan is a visual artist who lives and works in Limerick. She has exhibited throughout Ireland, France and New York. Her work uses both photography and painting to explore how concealed repression can seep through from the past. Alongside this the aesthetic and culture of the 1950s have strong visual resonances for her. She holds an MA in Fine Art Painting from Limerick School of Art and Design.

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Memory is the starting point for my work. Memories evoked through home movies, photographs, and stories about 1950s Ireland. This history plays a part in the stories we continue to construct about ourselves and our society today.

Found or family photographs are the source material for many of my paintings which address women’s lives in 1950s Ireland. I intervene to bring colour, new scale, and new meaning to the images prioritising women and giving these photographic images an afterlife. The figures in my paintings, mainly women, appear in ‘a situation’, sometimes smothered by heavy skies. The aesthetic and culture of the 1950s has a strong visual resonance for me.

My artwork offers my personal perspective on that time.