The LA exhibition, Troubles at Home, opens next weekend with funding from Culture Ireland and is quite a coup for Rogers because Track 16 is a gallery with a big reputation for dealing with political themes.

"I grew up listening to reports on the radio about the Troubles, " she says, recalling going across the pre-peace process fortified border crossings between Dundalk and Newry. "I like being Irish and I like being European. The IRA ruined a lot of my Irish patriotism. The Irish paintings [in the exhibition] follow my loss of patriotism, " she admits.

Rogers has not just drawn inspiration from Northern Ireland but also from the mood in the United States in the period since the 9/11 attacks.

She experienced the "anguish and panic" of the population in New York having been in the city on the day the World Trade Center was hit. "Now I look at what has happened in America since 9/11 and I really get scared. I really feel America is going down a very dangerous road and in a sense is losing itself. I have begun to see similarities in my experience growing up on the border of Northern Ireland during the Troubles and what I see happening now in America, " she says.

Rogers's work has long had a political theme. Her early work was influenced by the first Gulf War.

Amnesty International later invited her to travel to Bosnia to record on canvas the troubles in the Balkans region. One of her paintings was included in a 2005 exhibition at the United Nations in New York to mark the 10th anniversary of the Balkan conflict.

A former lecturer in fine art at Ballyfermot Senior College in Dublin, Rogers spent a decade living in Rome before moving to New York last year, joining the big Irish community "with lots of people like Gabriel Byrne who support Irish artists." The invitation to exhibit at the Track 16 Gallery in Los Angeles is a big break. "It's a really important gallery. It has a tradition of dealing with political work which a lot of galleries tend to shy away from, " she says.

"Michelle finds a way without preaching or pandering to take up urgent aspects of the human condition, " says Roger Ginty, the exhibition curator.

Rogers hopes to follow the Track 16 exhibition will a new show in Dublin - but in the meantime one of her latest paintings about Northern Ireland will hang at the RHA in Ely Place next May.