Majella O’Neill Collins lives and works on the island of Sherkin, just off the West Cork coast. Born in 1964, she studied at Limerick School of Art and Design.

Her work relates directly to her experience of living on an island, surrounded by water, and defined by the ever-changing weather and light. Majella makes paintings which try to make sense of what it means to live in this remote, rural and beautiful part of the world. Her approach is based on intuition and experimentation where painting is a means of reshaping the experience of the world, of examining, formalising and giving shape to perception. 

Majella played a leading role in establishing the acclaimed Cork University Hospital Millennium Collection, which contains the work of numerous leading artists and she is a member of the CUH Arts Committee since 2000.

She is currently a facilitator on the BA Visual Arts Degree Programme on Sherkin Island and was one of the key people involved in its set-up from the Pilot Programme in 1999 to its accreditation as an honours degree programme by Dublin Institute of Technology.

With her colleague Cora Collins, she ran the Sherkin Summer Art Workshops, a residential art course based on Sherkin Island from 2011 to 2015.

Majella served as a Board Member of West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen for 9 years and was the Chairperson of the Board from 2003 to 2009 when she steered the building development project as a member of the Building Development Group. A new purpose-built arts building opened to the public in Skibbereen in January 2015.

She has exhibited throughout Ireland and abroad and her work is represented in many private and public collections in Ireland, Europe, the USA and Australia.