Richard Hearns is an abstract artist with an abstract cv

Born in Beirut, adopted by Irish parents and now painting in the Burren

Richard Hearns was born in Beirut in the late 1970s in the midst of fierce fighting in the Lebanese capital. Since then, the 38-year-old artist has become one of Ireland's finest contemporary painters, working and living in the surrounds of the heart of the Burren, a beautiful national park in the southwest of the country.

“I was born in Beirut during the civil war, adopted by an Irish army officer who was serving with the UN peacekeeping forces and brought to Ireland,” Hearns tells me. “The adoption was facilitated by an Irish nun from County Donegal and organised by a Monsignor from County Clare who were both working in war-torn Lebanon at the time.”

He says that in the early 1990s his father took him back to Beirut and the Middle East but travel was problematic due to the First Intifada. “I hope to return again someday,” Hearns says. “I would very much like to take in the culture and maybe have the opportunity to create a body of work there. That is a dream of mine.”