Siobhain Moriarty

Siobhain Moriarty Biography

Ireland, born 1976

Siobhain Moriarty was born in London in 1976

My practice is rooted in the raw, often uncomfortable space where personal history, trauma, and memory intersect. I first began to draw at the age of fifteen while recovering from a catastrophic car accident that nearly claimed my life. Confined to a hospital bed for months, art became a lifeline—a way of coping, making sense of pain, and beginning to rebuild a fractured sense of self. That pivotal experience remains at the core of my work.

Working primarily in painting, I create emotionally charged, symbolic narratives that interrogate the human condition—loss, shame, resilience, violence, and tenderness—through a surreal yet highly intimate lens. Each piece in my practice is a form of storytelling, often drawn from lived experience or the experiences of those close to me. Some works appear autobiographical, others are fictions laced with truth, but all strive to provoke empathy and invite deeper questioning.

Recurring motifs—blood, domestic spaces, animals, celestial elements, spiritual symbols—convey the push and pull between innocence and horror, survival and surrender. Figures in my paintings are often isolated, silenced, or wounded, yet they are rendered with care and dignity. I am especially drawn to giving voice to those whose stories remain hidden or shrouded in shame, whether children, disabled people, women, or the neglected and forgotten.

My work does not aim to shock but to bear witness. I believe in the power of art to hold pain and beauty in the same breath, and to invite viewers into uncomfortable but necessary emotional and psychological spaces. These are not easy paintings, but they are honest ones. They speak from a place of lived experience and an unflinching need to make meaning from it.

I hold a BA (Hons) in Photography from the University of Derby, England, where I first encountered the American Abstract Expressionists—particularly the work of Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock—whose fearless mark-making and emotional depth left a lasting impact on me. I began painting in my early twenties as a means of creating true, visceral expression. This led to an MA in Communication Design at Central Saint Martins College, London. Still seeking to refine my draughtsmanship and deepen my technical understanding, I later studied at the Angel Academy of Art in Florence, Italy, focusing on classical drawing and painting techniques.