"A different point of view is simply the view from a place you're not" (HSBC Bank ad, Heathrow Airport, October 2008). Increasingly I have an interest in how the past and present collide with each other and negotiate a way forward. I recently came across a story where a publisher wouldn't publish a story on an aspect of a city's cultural heritage because it wasn't relevant to modern society.

And it led me to think how do you connect the past to the present if the past is buried. In a sense what vocabularies do you need to re-connect it?

The above thoughts grew out of a recent trip the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery to see the work of Cork born painter Daniel Maclise (1811-1870). On viewing the exhibition his work sat uneasy in my mind and raised several issues for me. In particular I was interested to read about Daniel's work attempting to forge a new spirit of British National identity for a new age – well his age, the mid to late nineteenth century.

The events he chronicled had a huge resonance for the identity of the society in which he lived. He designed his work to capture the public's imagination and to tell a story of human experience. Much of Daniel's specific orientations and sensibilities are here. So his art seems to be both an activity and a product. He took much of his inspiration from literary texts, particularly Shakespeare. Daniel had a particular interest in the Medieval period. The subjects of his portraits were also mainly literary including that if his friend Charles Dickens. Through the exhibition, one can see the wonderfully colourful and at times cinematic feel of his works and the time, effort, emotion and thought put into his pieces.

I could see also that there was a kind of tension of Daniel's work especially in attempting to connect it to today's mindsets. The accompanying panels next to the paintings directly or indirectly left his work open to contemplation, which is good and bad. The dynamics of his work are bound up with something soulful and purposeful – something motivating and ambitious. For the spectator, there is a magnetism to the sights and sensations of his paintings. It's as if the work has a voice but there seems also to be much more to it - an event and process, a painted landscape of living encounters, experiences and connections.