The pop cultural idea of the Celts is predicated on a very specific image: a warrior, face painted blue, yelling in the face of an invading force. That paint, according to some reports, was made from the dyes of the woad plant. It is also possible woad was never worn in the manner media portrays. In Woad, the artist uses this dissonance between reality and perception to explore how generational responsibility becomes trauma through the lens of the Irish Troubles.
Woad began as a poem, which was then incorporated into an installation. The poem is printed on a mirror, its frame made up of ground woad plant and apple tree branches—the tool by which mortals could pass into the Gaelic Otherworld--, which is placed behind a plastic film. Participants are welcomed to approach the film, dip their fingers in the woad-paint, and add their own warpaint to the film while looking at themselves and the poem in the mirror.
The pigment is handmade by the artist, and the branches used to create the frame were cut from an apple tree planted by his grand-uncle shortly after arriving in the united States.
Woad
2025
Poem
The Prairie Light Review, Fall 2025 Edition
Budlovsky Award for Best Written Work Winner
I wear the war paint
Like my daddy did,
Like my grandy did,
For the wars they fought
And couldn’t win.
I wear the war paint,
A blue banded sash
To cover my eyes,
To blind me to the fact
That my children will wear it, too.
I wear the war paint.
Proud. Honored.
A tradition so ancient,
We can’t even
Find evidence for it.
Because the war continues.
Now it’s waged on Internet forums.
My rifle is hypocrisy.
The streets are clean
Until they aren’t.
I wear the war paint
Because it’s the only thing I know.
It’s the only thing that matters
In a world where nothing does
And no one cares.
I wear the war paint
Because the pigments don’t run
From tears or the scary
Things my parents
Banished like snakes.
I wear the war paint,
Tattoos on skin that doesn’t tan
Like my mother’s does,
When she wears the paint
Though she never had to
Because the war continues.
It doesn’t rage on peace lines
Or corner stores,
But on traumatized children
Who never knew the sound of bombs.
I wear the war paint.
I wear the war paint.
I wear the war paint
Because the war continues.
Because I wear the war paint.
Because I wear the war paint.
Because I wear the war paint,
The war continues.