Dervla O'Flaherty is an Irish artist working mainly with paint and wood. Her work explores links between ideas of identity, place and the unknown. When we find ourselves in new and unfamiliar territory, imagination begins to take hold, collaging elements from the familiar onto the unknown. In her painting, symbolic references and instinctual mark making inhabit familiar places, wild imaginary landscapes as well as the underground world of the unconscious. Each painting is a journey to an unknown place, actively exploring how an individual maps terrain in unique ways. Methods of coating and recoating, removing and overlapping material reveal histories of the work; decisions, desires, mistakes, second guessing, wrong turns and resolve. While giving us a sense of where we are, they are reluctant to direct us to any concrete landmark, person, place or thing. Anything could happen, says the poet CD Wright, in the strange cities of the mind.