Life has thrown up various challenges for artist Richard Hearns, but they have inspired him to add fresh layers to his work

The last time Richard Hearns and I met, we had been at his studio in the heart of the Burren. The karst blushed with sunset indigo as the rising star of contemporary Irish art told the story about his remarkable origins as an adopted baby orphan of the Lebanese civil war in the late 1970s. Fate and a plucky Donegal nun intervened to make sure he escaped the warzone with an Irish UN Commandant posted there.