Julie Corcoran Artist Statement

I am a visual artist living in Cavan, with a studio in Dundalk working through photography, printmaking, and more recently, sculpture. My practice explores themes of identity, ritual, and spiritual connection to place. I am particularly drawn to liminal spaces — both physical and emotional — where transformation, reflection, and quiet resistance take root.

My foundation is in digital photography and archival printmaking, but recent years have seen a deliberate shift in my approach. I have begun to question the environmental and ethical impact of image-making, and to move towards slower, more sustainable processes that invite collaboration with the natural world. Cyanotype has become a key medium in this journey — its alchemical qualities, its reliance on sunlight and water, and its capacity for layering and improvisation allow for deeply embodied, site-responsive work.

My recent project Sacred Cyanotypes, made in response to St. Brigid’s Well in Faughart, Co. Louth, marks the beginning of a practice that is ecological, experimental, and spiritually engaged. I now consider my work an act of both making and unmaking — unlearning harmful habits and opening space for new, generous ways of creating.

Influenced by artists such as Alice Maher, Jesse Presley Jones, and Aindreas Scholz, I seek to create work that holds space for uncertainty and dialogue. Whether through large-scale cyanotypes, silk prints, or sculpture, I aim to honour the process as much as the outcome — to reflect rather than extract, and to explore what it means to make art in ethical conversation with our environment.