Painting and Politics: the '80s and '90s
Paintings dating from the period of the Troubles—which may loosely be said to continue today even after cease fires, all-party talks, and the so-called " The work of Patrick Graham—characterised as "darkly brooding,
tortured and torn paintings depicting a traumatised psychic terrain riven by guilt, sorrow and anger"—may be said to summarise many of these tendencies. Merging an expressionistic use of paint that looks back to
interwar German painting with politically potent icons of Irishness, such as the shamrock, Graham's painting can be emotionally violent. For Graham, Ireland is a country that can be bought, like Farrell's prostitute, one that is
simultaneously worthy of love and hate in a mixture of affection, contempt, and embarrassment that is reminiscent of the writings of James Joyce. 
Good Friday Agreement" of 1998 because of continuing violence in
Northern Ireland—often engage directly with contemporary politics. Whether in the work of David Crone or that of Rita Duffy, who have both been painting for many years in studios in war-torn Belfast where the impact of politics is inescapable, the
reality of life in the Troubles finds its way onto many canvases. Many such scenes are urban or convey an urban sense of dislocation in order to explore the place of the individual in Irish society. Dermot Seymour 
explores similar issues in scenes set in the bucolic Irish countryside in which the military is ever present and
often merges with the legacy of Catholicism and the potency of the Irish land. Likewise, artists such as 
Brian Maguire and Alice Maher often draw on Irish political or social history for their subject matter.
