The Walls of Wexford Festival – Ireland

I painted this mural in 2022 in Wexford, Ireland for Walls of Wexford Festival. The inspiration for this piece was a the history behind Selskar Abbey.

Legend has it that King Henry II visited the abbey to pay penance for the murder of Thomas Becket. So I focused on T.S. Elliot’s retelling of the association in “Murder in the Cathedral”, having taken some still frames from a 50s movie adaptation of this play to compose the final sketch.

The chorus is a key part of “Murder in the Cathedral” and provides a link between audience, characters and actions – as in Greek drama. I decided to represent the chorus women as if they were telling the story of the murder. The wall is right next to the Abbey so I painted the women facing it with their looks of judgment, a nod (on my part) to the oppression that the church and religion has caused (particularly to women) over the centuries and the history of the world.