WIP Work in progress
26th May 2023
7 A secret never to be told. Acrylic and mixed media on panel. 24 x 24”, 60.96 x 60.9cms
Soon, it will be 3 years since I started focussing on my art full-time. I always loved making things but I was much too reliant on other people’s opinions of what was ‘art’. It took me a long time to learn that what is important to me is be authentic and create from the soul.
What is success? It depends on what you want as an artist. Do you want fame and fortune? Do you want admiration and respect? Do you want to learn more about yourself and be the best artist you can be? Fundamentally, I believe we are all meant to create. It is a tool, like dreaming or imagining that helps us to make sense of our world. Expressing ourselves through art is a way to repair emotional damage, to recover from trauma, to enlighten our thoughts, to calm our anger and frustration, to feel excited and alive. It can also be emotionally draining and excruciatingly soul destroying. Sometimes you don’t know what your work is about until you have got it to a stage where you can gain some perspective from it. You learn to trust the process but it takes a long time to feel confident, to work through the down times and to allow the art to come through you.
What am I working on at the moment? It started with an interest in magpies. When they come into the garden, they always create a ripple. I wanted the magpies to be in some kind of setting and I’d finished my series based on flags so I was focussed on the idea of a grid. There were lots of sudoku pages around the house so I started with placing the magpies on those and it connected to the idea of numbers from the nursery rhyme; one for sorrow, two for joy, etc. I start each day with a walk to the harbour and I was noticing the buildings and the general ‘tiredness’ of the old sheds and harbour. Gradually, these structures from around the village crept into the paintings. They are like silent witnesses to the events and changes over time. As the images become more abstracted, the buildings are rendered in a less structured way and have evolved into a representational colour or a mark.
Birds are often seen as messengers, as are artists: we detect changes, we foresee events. That’s where I am sitting at the moment with the magpies and buildings working together as witnesses to our changing times. I realise that these images have a lot to do with me being ‘foreign’ or a ‘disruptor’. Like the Magpie, I can create a ripple because I am slightly ‘other’. I belong and don’t belong. I left Ireland as a 20-year-old and I am now both ‘a part of’ and ‘apart from’ my adopted community. I am at home here but I also have a sense of detachment coupled with a sense of belonging to a place that no longer exists.
Soon, it will be 3 years since I started focussing on my art full-time. I always loved making things but I was much too reliant on other people’s opinions of what was ‘art’. It took me a long time to learn that what is important to me is be authentic and create from the soul.
What is success? It depends on what you want as an artist. Do you want fame and fortune? Do you want admiration and respect? Do you want to learn more about yourself and be the best artist you can be? Fundamentally, I believe we are all meant to create. It is a tool, like dreaming or imagining that helps us to make sense of our world. Expressing ourselves through art is a way to repair emotional damage, to recover from trauma, to enlighten our thoughts, to calm our anger and frustration, to feel excited and alive. It can also be emotionally draining and excruciatingly soul destroying. Sometimes you don’t know what your work is about until you have got it to a stage where you can gain some perspective from it. You learn to trust the process but it takes a long time to feel confident, to work through the down times and to allow the art to come through you.
What am I working on at the moment? It started with an interest in magpies. When they come into the garden, they always create a ripple. I wanted the magpies to be in some kind of setting and I’d finished my series based on flags so I was focussed on the idea of a grid. There were lots of sudoku pages around the house so I started with placing the magpies on those and it connected to the idea of numbers from the nursery rhyme; one for sorrow, two for joy, etc. I start each day with a walk to the harbour and I was noticing the buildings and the general ‘tiredness’ of the old sheds and harbour. Gradually, these structures from around the village crept into the paintings. They are like silent witnesses to the events and changes over time. As the images become more abstracted, the buildings are rendered in a less structured way and have evolved into a representational colour or a mark.
Birds are often seen as messengers, as are artists: we detect changes, we foresee events. That’s where I am sitting at the moment with the magpies and buildings working together as witnesses to our changing times. I realise that these images have a lot to do with me being ‘foreign’ or a ‘disruptor’. Like the Magpie, I can create a ripple because I am slightly ‘other’. I belong and don’t belong. I left Ireland as a 20-year-old and I am now both ‘a part of’ and ‘apart from’ my adopted community. I am at home here but I also have a sense of detachment coupled with a sense of belonging to a place that no longer exists.