Her early artistic development was grounded in traditional approaches to landscape, architectural, and portrait painting, employing oils and watercolors. Over the past two decades, however, her practice has gradually shifted and evolved toward a more experimental, textural, and process-oriented methodology. Today, her work continues to draw from landscapes, architectural structures, and abandoned or forgotten spaces encountered in her surroundings and travels, as well as from personal memories and narrative fragments that emerge through lived experience.
Photography forms an integral part of her process; She often captures close-up images of surfaces and textures during walks or travels. These observations form the tactile language of her paintings. Beginning on canvas, wood panel, or paper, she builds up multiple layers of material intuitively, allowing the process to guide the outcome. Each work undergoes repeated cycles of construction, defacing, and reconstruction, as surfaces are scratched, torn, covered, or buried beneath new material and paint. This method embodies a dialogue between presence and absence, revelation and concealment - where stories, memories, and histories are interwoven and obscured within the material strata. Ultimately, her practice is a continuous investigation into texture, layering materials, time, and transformation, exploring how material processes can evoke memory, decay, and renewal.
Petra Moll lives and works in Ireland and her work has been on display within multiple international group exhibitions. Her work has been acquired for a variety of art collections.
