ARTIST PHILIPPA BAYLISS BOUGHT THE DERELICT SCHOOLHOUSE 30 years ago and converted it in her own unique way. Thirty-two years is a long time to spend in any one house, particularly if, as an artist, your home is as much an expression of yourself as any of your paintings. Time, imagination, life, colour, gifts from friends, chance finds, opera props, even a stuffed bear, a cottage garden grown wildly so there would be more to paint are all essential ingredients of Philippa Bayliss's canal-side home at Ardclough in Co Kildare, all mixed together like pigments on a palette and displayed with the artist's spatial sensitivity to create an essential and personal statement...

FOR A NUMBER OF YEARS and in an informal way, Irish artists have been visiting and working in Mexico. This, in part, has been possible due to the presence of Irish people living in Mexico such as Sean O'Criadain and Peter Lamb, who invited painters like Patrick Scott to stay with him. Pat worked with weavers in Teotitlán del Valle, in Oaxaca, merging his designs with...