Where to next? (fine art print)

In earthy umbers, ochres and siennas, a young woman carries everything she owns on her back. Her face turns towards the place she is leaving, caught between sorrow and determination. Above her, a scarred grey-blue sky presses heavily over the scene, leaving little room for easy optimism.

The painting deals with an old and recurring grief: forced departure, poverty and the need to keep moving despite loss. The figure's tightly gripping hand and set expression hold that tension between vulnerability and resolve.

The work was prompted by the touring exhibition Coming Home: Art and the Great Hunger (2018), curated by Niamh O'Sullivan, and by references to the work of Jack B. Yeats. It connects the displacement experienced during An Gorta Mór with the continuing displacement of refugees and asylum seekers, touching on class, identity and ethnicity without treating those histories as interchangeable.