Melissa O’Donnell has a particularly attractive example of the genre in the kitchen/dining room of her new home in Wicklow, but it’s not purely an interiors hack; most of the framed pieces on the wall are Melissa’s own work and, more than anything, the wall is an incentive and an inspiration to keep up her art practice. “About three of the pieces are by other artists, people whose work I bought during Covid, but otherwise it’s all mine. There are some collages, some charcoal pieces, some life drawings,” she notes. “It’s me trying out different things.”

The wall is also a daily reminder of several other things – the freedom she now enjoys to work at her art, and it’s also a validation, a reminder of the success she’s been enjoying recently, with not only solo exhibitions in prestigious galleries like the RHA Ashford Gallery last year and her upcoming exhibition at the Solomon Gallery on Dublin’s Balfe Street, which will run from May 4 to 27, but also inclusion in prestigious Irish art sales abroad alongside works by Louis Le Brocquy and Patrick Scott.

The kids — Melissa is the youngest of three — were encouraged to pursue music and art and any interests they enjoyed, and, as a result, all three are creative; her brother Ruan is a writer and historian and professor of history at University of Limerick, while Conor is a musician and works in the lighting department in RTÉ.

Al’s day job was as a designer in RTÉ and Melissa was hugely influenced by him. “I was always drawing and making things as a kid. I’d grown up visiting Dad at work and I was inspired to work in the same field, so I did visual communication at the Institute of Art and Design in Dún Laoghaire,” she notes.

After graduation in the 1990s, Melissa got a Donnelly visa and headed for the States. “There were limited job options here. I always wanted to go to America and when I got there I got a job in advertising. It was very hard work, very fast-paced. Very Mad Men but without the debauchery and the cocktails at lunchtime,” she laughs.

She stayed seven years in total and became a US citizen. She met her husband, who is also from Greystones though they had never known each other in Ireland — in the States and they had their first child Eoin (22), a musician, there. When they returned home in 2001, they set up their own company, with Melissa running the design end while her husband looked after production and publishing. He still has the company but Melissa became a full-time home-maker and mother when Ryan (19), Lucy (16) and Zoe (15) arrived. Four children is difficult enough to manage, but sadly Ryan has profound special needs.

“We didn’t realise the situation at first. He didn’t reach many of his developmental milestones till he was two-and-a-half. He was diagnosed at three and he didn’t walk till he was four. He’s non-verbal, he needs supervision and assistance with his daily routine and has behavioural issues. He’s very demanding and there were constant levels of anxiety and stress trying to cope around what’s going to happen next and to maintain daily life,” Melissa explains, adding, “I became his full-time carer. My friends used to say to me, ‘we can’t understand how you keep going’, because of the levels of stress. It took an enormous amount of effort.”

After knocking on a lot of doors, they finally got a place for Ryan when he was 14 in a residence that caters specially for his needs. “When he reached adolescence, it became apparent we could no longer cope with the demands of looking after him. We spent a lot of time advocating for something to be done. There are a lot of parents struggling — we struggled, even though we got a lot of support from our families. It was a very difficult time.”

Ryan is now in St Catherine’s adult services and, according to Melissa, he lives in a lovely bungalow with two other young people. It has a big garden as he needs a lot of space.

“It’s a protected environment with a good routine and a stimulating programme. He’s living his own life now, a little bit more independently from us. We see him quite regularly and I think we’re interacting better as a family,” she says.

“It’s thrilling to see how well Ryan is doing. He’s so happy, it’s been life-changing; we won the lottery getting the place.” She adds: “If this hadn’t happened, I’d still be a full-time carer; it’s made me appreciate the day-to-day freedoms people take for granted.”

When it came to working again,Melissa started by taking painting classes near home in Wicklow, in the RHA and online. “I used to draw a lot but I always wanted to paint and six years ago I went for it. These classes ignited my desire to have my own artistic practice in fine art. Although I still love good, strong design works and I do apply a lot of those learnt foundational skills to my present work, I find working as a painter allows for more creative personal expression.”

As well as the classes, she’s constantly studying the work of the great names in art, whether here in the National Gallery or abroad. “I’m a regular visitor to the National Gallery. I often go in there to study the works of Orpen and Leech. Or the Goya, I visit that because my father loved it. I remember being with my dad and he’d be sketching the paintings up really close and I’d be so embarrassed. Now I do it, I’m the one with the nose right up at the painting!

“I’m a paint nerd. I spent a long time learning about paint. I think Philip Guston said it’s coloured dirt, but whatever you say about it, it’s a beautiful medium with endless possibilities.”

Melissa is constantly sketching, and, as oils are her medium of choice, she’s usually working on several paintings at a time. “My paintings are semi-realism, I’m trying to communicate maybe an atmosphere, maybe some mystery, a feeling, a sense of place.”

She’s fortunate in that she has the use of a studio near her home and she goes there daily. “I work around the school routine. But I need the studio to work. I think you need quiet and space to tap into creativity. It’s like a meditation, you need a level of concentration. I take it seriously. If I don’t go to the studio there’s something missing in my day.”

She bought it during Covid and moved in last summer. It comprises four bedrooms, one of which is en suite; a bathroom; a living room and the kitchen/dining room.

“The great thing about it is it’s very warm and cosy, with great insulation and the top Ber rating,” Melissa says, adding, “It was a shell and I decorated it as I wanted it.”​

She adds that, while the builderput in the kitchen, she got her lighting from Neptune. Furniture such as her sofa came from Flanagan Kearns in Bray. Cushions and other soft furnishings were sourced from Ryle Designs and she has a few old pieces from her own family home — sadly, her mother died during the pandemic.

“I have a strong belief it’s an endeavour worth doing. As an artist, I view the world slightly differently and I have an ability to share that.”

And in doing so, Melissa, like our other artists, enriches our lives.

‘Beautiful Decay’ — new paintings by Melissa O’Donnell opens on May 4 at the Solomon Gallery, Balfe Street, D2 and runs until May 27. See solomonfineart.ie