I was delighted to be one of the 12 Minaw Collective artists to take part in this exhibition of original works created for display in the Guinness Storehouse. It was a project I was really excited about for personal reasons. My grandfather worked at Guinness starting as a messenger boy at just 14 years old, sadly I never got to meet my grandfather Matthew Waine because he died in 1977 before I was born. He had 11 children, my mam Doreen was his 2nd eldest. Before creating our pieces we were invited for a tour, the amazing team at the Guinness Archives had my grandfathers file, and two of my great-grandfathers files waiting for me and I was unexpectedly moved by the experience of delving into the employment records. My mam had always talked about my grandfather like he was a saint, he was a very selfless person and worked hard to support his family. But what I found interesting was reading about the reprimands he received at work, that he was 2 and a half hours late one day, he was reported to his foreman for "skylarking" then was "hiding and idling" to avoid him. Silly work things, probably a bad day at work for him, but they humanised him for me, made me see a little mischievous streak and I felt more connected to him.  He was pensioned in 1972, my mam probably told me but I didn't realise he only had five years to live after finishing work. A few years ago a photograph of my grandfather was published in The Irish Times, none of us in the family had ever seen it. Since then we've seen this iconic photo of grandad blown up on the walls of pubs all over the world. I love the photo, it captures him on a normal day, just going about his work, in a nostalgic old Dublin setting. I have a huge print of it on the wall at home. When I was asked to create a giant piece alongside my fellow Minaws for Guinness I knew I wanted my piece to be about my family connection. I called my piece "Skylarking", it's about how through exploring the Guinness Archives, I was able to find out more about my grandad and feel more connected to him. Because the piece was so big, I was able to add so many tasty textures that would be seen in this large scale. It's been so nice to see the piece displayed in the historic Guinness Storehouse, alongside the other beautiful works by the Minaw Collective.