PETE MONAGHAN

“Neglected and dilapidated places fascinate Pete Monaghan. He has returned to them over and over again until they have become firmly established as the subject matter of his paintings. What is it that draws some of us to the tumbledown, to the make-do, to ramshackle farms and rusting echoes of abandoned barns? These are tatty, unaesthetic places. Many people turn their gaze away from them but, for those with eyes to see them, their forms are beautiful and their stories are compelling. Every detail reflects some labour, the solution to some problem: each boulder in the dry-stone walls was once lifted into place by hand, each patch made in corrugated-iron roofs is the ghost of someone’s ladder-reach. These places all were once the centre of someone’s life.”(Dr. Peter Wakelin 2016)