While our own Taoiseach Bertie Ahern has not built up quite the same reputation for extravagant artistic patronage as, say, Lorenzo de Medici, the work of one artist in particular seems to have caught his eye: Irish sculptor Orla de Bri.

Ahern and de Bri crossed paths at the official opening of Park West Business Park in 1999, when her first largescale outdoor commission, 'The Bastard Son of Sisyphus', was unveiled. A few years passed and then, in 2003, Bertie and Miriam Ahern approached de Bri to commission a wedding present for their daughter Georgina and soon-to-be son-in-law Nicky Byrne of Westlife.

And last year, to top things off, Ahern did the honours of opening a solo show of de Bri's work at the Solomon Gallery in Dublin. "I asked him would he open the exhibition, not thinking he would at all, " says de Bri, "but then he said he would!"

De Bri has, in a relatively short period of time, built up a strong reputation in Ireland both for her dramatic outdoor sculptures and her more intimate indoor pieces and private commissions. Her work is highly covetable among the movers and shakers of the art and business worlds and, over the years, she has become friends with the likes of Norma Smurfit and Jackie Lavin.

Her works are included in the Bank of Ireland, Aer Rianta and DCU art collections, while one of her pieces has been presented to Princess Anne. Her public commissions are on display everywhere from garda stations to hotels and colleges, and many of them have become landmarks in themselves. Motorists travelling along the Cork to Dublin road, for example, cannot fail to miss 'Na hArd Rithe/The High Kings' near Cashel . . . five 23ft statues made of bronze, gold and stainless steel.

But despite the patronage of the Taoiseach and the attention her work receives in high places, de Bri is refreshingly down to earth, modest and level-headed. In fact, she couldn't be further from the cliche of the solitary, tortured artist. She fits more into the image of an energetic, practical mother juggling career and family life.

"Some artists have to get into the mood to do their work but I was always just so delighted to get a bit of time to do it that I hadn't time to get into the mood, " she says. "I think women can do that sort of thing . . . no matter what your career is, you learn how to balance it. I come in at half five in overalls, put the dinner on, run and have a shower, have dinner with the family and then help the kids with their homework. But when you're doing something you love and you've had a great day's work, then you can just enjoy your time with the family."

De Bri lives in a tastefully decorated, spacious home on the outskirts of Ashbourne, Co Meath, with her husband Finn, an IT project manager, her two teenage children, Jeda (16) and Cal (14), and a friendly Alsatian. The house is situated down a quiet lane off a busy commuter road and, when I arrive on a damp summer's afternoon, the only hint that it is the home of an artist is the small female figure crowning the iron gates of the driveway . . .unmistakably the work of de Bri.

Once inside, her artistic presence becomes more prominent, with many sculptures dotted throughout the house and garden; even in the entrance hall her first bronze work . . . a tiny, abstracted figure . . . is placed opposite a large, imposing female form with breasts protruding and legs splayed. In the back garden, de Bri has a purposebuilt, double-height studio, where she works every day.

"I love it out here, " she says of Co Meath, where she has lived for the past 20 years. "There's more of a community feeling and you also have the space you need to work in sculpture. You can work on your own and you have the garden and nature all around you, so you've time to think. The two kids go off to school and Finn goes into work and then it's just me in the studio and I get immersed in the work and the day flies."

When I visit, de Bri is working on a major outdoor commission: five high kings . . . not dissimilar to those on the Cork road . . . for the September launch of the residential section of a lavish housing, hotel and golf-course development on the grounds of Killeen Castle near Dunshaughlin.

The torso of a headless high king is balanced on struts in her studio, still very much a work in progress.

Bronze casting is a complex process involving many stages, but the only stage de Bri does not carry out in her studio is the casting, which takes place at a foundry in Dublin. "I love the whole physical process of making it, " de Bri explains. "If you hand it over to someone else, there's no evolutionary stages where you play with it and discover new possibilities."

De Bri's artistic streak first emerged as a child growing up in Beaumont, Dublin, when her father Fred, himself very artistic, used to sit herself and her brother and sister down in front of a bowl of fruit and encourage them to draw it. "We'd all do it but I was the only one who actually enjoyed it, " she recalls with a laugh.

On finishing school, de Bri was keen to go to art college but, it being the 1980s, this did not seem like a practical choice at the time.

"I wanted to do sculpture but I suppose my parents were reluctant to let me do it because they felt there was no career in it. So I did a dress-design course at Grafton Academy for four years."

After working for a year in the design industry, de Bri decided to do a course in metal sculpture at the North Strand VEC, where her teacher, Andrew Clancy, became a great source of encouragement and instruction. "I spent a year learning how to work in steel and I loved everything about it, the physical part of it, the dirt of it, the smell of it . . . everything."

Following this, de Bri did another course under Clancy, this time in bronze casting at NCAD. A combination of talent and luck saw her career blossom very soon after she finished this course in 1995.

"I had no great idea that this was what I was going to do for the rest of my life, I just knew I loved it. But I was very lucky because the first exhibition I ever applied to take part in was the outdoor sculpture exhibition at Fernhill Gardens, up in the Dublin mountains. I got accepted and was absolutely thrilled."

As a result of that exhibition, she was invited to participate in an Aer Rianta exhibition at Dublin airport and, out of the blue, she also received a letter from Noelle Campbell-Sharp, inviting her to do a residency at Cill Rialaig in Co Kerry. De Bri then began exhibiting at Campbell-Sharp's Origin Gallery in Dublin, before becoming one of the Solomon's gallery artists. Now she is constantly inundated with commissions.

When de Bri first began working in sculpture, she worked mainly in steel. But as both her economic and artistic resources grew, she turned increasingly towards bronze casting. In an era of installation art and conceptual work, bronze is used by relatively few artists. But de Bri found herself seduced by the medium.

"The best part of it is seeing your piece evolving from a thought into a three-dimensional object . . . you can see something coming out of nothing."

She continues to work in steel as well as bronze and mainly creates abstracted figurative sculptures.

In her works the body is smoothed and elongated and the faces are left blank. "I'm drawn to the figure because of the emotional aspect of it, and it strikes a chord with people, " she says. "I never like to put in the details of a nose and mouth because I always feel it's pigeon-holing it. I don't need expressions on the face . . . you can express something with the tilt of the head, the way an arm is positioned or the way the figure stands."

Rather than depicting a particular individual, de Bri's works evoke strong personal emotions and universal human concerns. Often depicting female forms with accentuated breasts and buttocks, her sculptures tend to oscillate between the deeply sensual and teasingly sexual. She uses a variety of textures and patinas to add to the evocation of the theme . . . and sometimes even uses gold and diamonds. Her pieces can have classical or mythical references and frequently feature clever visual puns or witty titles. Others . . . such as the 'His and Hers' male and female crucifixes hanging on the wall of her dining room . . . have a playful, iconoclastic aspect.

In recent works, de Bri has become increasingly interested in integrating human forms with nature. "I feel we've become so sophisticated and civilised that we've detached ourselves from nature, so I'm combining the two.

I've picked elements from nature like trees and roots to symbolise inner growth. The elements of nature bring it home that we are still evolving and there's room for growth and change."

In essence, de Bri's work is inspired by her own feelings and state of mind. "My work is really linked in with my life, so as your life changes and you evolve as a person, the work naturally follows itf I sculpt my emotional landscape, so if you're feeling upbeat, you'll tend to go towards making a piece that expresses that, or if you're more melancholy, that will come out. The work goes off in directions you don't anticipate . . . it's like a journey of self-discovery."

Her exhibition at the Solomon last year, Shadow, was a rather dark exploration of the depths of the unconscious inspired by the writings of Jung. But just last month, two decidedly more playful works were unveiled at Venu brasserie in Dublin . . . a pair of large tree-like sculptures on which two tiny female figures are perched . . .

'Tend Me' and 'Sitting Pretty'.

Such is the versatility of de Bri's work that she can mine the darkest side of the human psyche while creating lighthearted works about contemporary cosmopolitan life and also working on dramatic outdoor commissions. De Bri sees her work as becoming increasingly "inclusive" and "multifaceted", embracing every aspect of life and the world around us.

"Art should reflect all elements of life. It can be aesthetic and still be conceptual; it can be difficult, it can be beautiful, it can be clever, it can be wise . . . art can integrate all those ideas. That's the way my work is going: all-inclusive, more conscious and more aware of things . . . the way we should be."

Orla de Bri will be participating in Collectibles 2007 at the Solomon Gallery from 8 - 30 October