About Róisín
I’m Róisín O’Farrell. I’m an Irish artist, teacher and retreat host.
My paintings begin close to home. Welly boots, light-filled interiors, the comfort and beauty of an ordinary life and family. More recently my work has turned to expressive landscapes shaped by atmosphere, memory, travel and place. And I work with women who want to reconnect with their creativity and live more expansively through art.
From my studio in Co. Wicklow, five minutes from the sea and fifteen from the mountains, I divide my time between painting, exhibiting, teaching and leading retreats in Ireland, Malta and Rwanda.
But it didn’t start out this way…
An impeccable lineage…
I grew up surrounded by artists. It was something I took completely for granted, (shame on me)
My mother Patricia is a larger than life artist and has been a source of creative encouragement my whole life. A bit like having a kindly art college professor available at all hours, which is both a gift and occasionally a lot.
Formative figures included Yann Renard Goulet, a member of Aosdána, Ireland’s state-honoured body of distinguished artists, and many of the women in my family who painted, wrote and made things with their hands.
Creativity was simply the water we swam in.
The long way round…
Growing up in that family, you might think going into art would have been easy. It wasn’t. Like many, my inner critic was born extremely vocal. I knew what good art looked like. Producing it myself felt like a different matter altogether.
After graduating in Veterinary Nursing and working in London, I returned to Ireland, ran a business for six years, then built a career in marketing and customer relations. People were always at the centre of it. I loved communicating, and discovered early that teaching was something I was genuinely drawn to.
In the early nineties, my then-boyfriend and later husband and I created a liberal arts festival, bringing together art, music, comedy and politics through a liberal faith lens. Around the same time, I was studying conflict resolution, peace and reconciliation.
It all felt like separate threads. Looking back, I can see that all these threads, the business, the arts, the people, were converging into the person I was becoming.
I just didn’t know it yet.
The turn…
Then in my thirties, two things happened in quick succession. The company I worked for went under. And my Nana, at 96, died.
She had been formidable. In her seventies, she rediscovered life. In her eighties, she travelled the world and had her first short stories published. She never once suggested it was too late for anything. She just got on with it.
Her life became part of the story I carry about what women can do when they finally take that first step. So, I took mine.
I decided to paint everyday, as if that was my job, and see where it would take me.
Where I am now…
For over twenty years, I have been exhibiting and selling my work through established galleries and art fairs in Ireland and internationally. The practice is still very much alive: new bodies of work, new risks, new directions.
Alongside that, I teach. Not hobby classes. Structured artistic development for women who want to paint with greater confidence and skill, and build a creative life that genuinely sustains them.
My retreats are immersive creative experiences, not painting holidays. Serious tuition, thoughtful conversation, beautiful environments and real care. Women leave with stronger work and, usually, a slightly altered sense of what is possible for them.
Ireland, Malta and Rwanda have each become part of that story, rooted in something real: cultural connection and what it means to witness a place with genuine attention rather than to simply pass through it.
I believe creativity is not a luxury. It is a sustaining force. And midlife, despite what we are sometimes told, is all about expansion.
If any of that resonates, you’re probably in the right place.