Journalist Victoria G. L. Brunton sits down with Irish artist Juliana Shiel to discuss why she left Ireland to pursue her career.
It's not often you meet another person and feel as though you’re looking in a mirror - unless you’re a young Irish creative forced to emigrate in search of career prospects, nightlife and affordable housing, of course.
When I came across Juliana Shiel on TikTok, I was immediately struck by her familiarly soothing Irish accent and talent for makeup artistry. Diving deeper, I found she was gifted in the discipline of fine art and even named some of her works as Gaeilge.
Finally, I discovered she was not only based in London, but lived just a stones throw from my apartment. I couldn’t help but to ask Alexa to play Another One Bites The Dust.
Jokes aside, I knew I had to meet with Juliana for two reasons: firstly, because she is an incredibly talented Irish woman at the beginning of her career, and secondly to find out how Ireland had lost yet another young creative to a city just one short and stressful Ryanair flight away.
Suffice to say, I was delighted to sit down with Juliana to cover everything from the inspiration behind her work to her motivation for emigration, and everything in between.
"My whole family are really arty," Juliana told me, "but I was in school during the recession, so the chance of becoming a musician or a painter felt like, well, zero."
"It was more like get a proper job, go to university, get a proper degree and be an engineer. I went on to do science for five years, and I liked that, but I knew towards the end of it I just didn't want to be in the lab. It just wasn't for me."
Like many of our hobbies over lockdown, Juliana’s innate passion for creativity resurfaced during the pandemic - her pieces, of course, being a far cry from our iced coffees and banana breads.
"During the lockdown, I always painted and drew; it was a hobby, kind of like everyone else," Juliana continued. "My dad has this massive garage full of all these 'ingredients’, if that’s what you call them? He just had everything and I thought, I’m going to start mixing these."
"So many of those tins and cans were unlabelled, I don't even know what they were and he doesn't know what they were. Because of this, a lot of my original paintings, I could never recreate - and I have tried."
Picking my jaw off the floor when Juliana then revealed that her first painting sold to a friend's mother for just €12 (talk about a bargain), we dove into the sequence of events that led to the creative’s ‘London calling’ moment, so to speak.
"There was this initiative implemented by the government, like a pilot Basic Income scheme for the arts. "Nine thousand people applied hoping to be given a wage for two and a half years - you don't have to worry about money, you just do your thing and the government will pay for you."
"I had kind of convinced myself that if I got this, I would really give my art a go, and if I didn’t, I’d take it as a sign to go straight into a nine-to-five," she admits.
"I didn’t get it, and I’m not a crier but I really cried. It was like a split in my life. I really wanted to pursue it and it didn’t happen."
Juliana recalls this moment as the catalyst for her move: "My friends lived in London and I was like, maybe I can go there and do art."
"It’s not just me, everyone has found that," she adds. "There are just so many more jobs. I just feel like, in Ireland, it makes more sense to go and come back, genuinely. Go, get experience and then maybe come back if you can."
Not only is the size and scale of the city so enticing to young creatives, it’s even more than the bounty of opportunity and experiences London has to offer, it’s freedom.
"On top of all these things, I’ve lived in Dublin my whole life - it’s so small. The best thing about London is no one cares who you are; if you walk down the road wearing the weirdest s**t ever, literally no one even bats an eyelid."
"I feel like here you can do and you can be whatever and whoever you want, and I think that's a really important part of growing," she muses.
Despite feeling the need to leave Ireland to pursue career opportunities, Juliana insists that being Irish is a great source of pride, and something she feels incredibly positive about altogether.
"I grew up in a really cultured family," Juliana explains. "We come from a family rooted in the countryside where people speak Irish and everyone plays Trad music. I have a strong connection to my Irish heritage."
"My parents would have spoken Irish and, in school, I wouldn’t have had interest, but now that I'm older I appreciate it so much more."
This pride filters through into the artis's work where you’ll find paintings entitled "Mil" which translates to ‘honey’, "Péitseog" which translates to ‘peach’ and many more alongside them on her website.
From my chat with Juliana, it seems that it's safe to say that Irish culture, heritage, and pride are safe with the younger generations of Ireland. I only hope that we can hold onto them.
