Day-planner sketches

For most of January and February, I have been back to work on the studio attic, trying to sort and purge things to make space (and sense!) so that I can get back to painting. Perhaps I have not been brutal enough, as I am still hanging on to quite a lot of "stuff", but I have been doing a fair amount of shredding (about 6 bags full so far) and recycling. One thing I have finally realised -- this is like a revelation to me -- day-planners are not the same as diary-journals! With this knowledge, all I had to do was rip out the personal details to shred and recycle the very useful, but no longer necessary, items. Good thing I do check them before discarding, as this sketch of my daughter (I remember her being asleep in the car) was in the 2005 book.

I do use sketchbooks most of the time, but if my purse is too small a sketchbook doesn't fit in it. So if needs be, pages in the ever-present day-planner get used, and I always carry a pen with me. I was living in rural Kerry in 1995 and I must have done these cow legs while walking past fields.

Again from the 1995 day-planner, I was taking a close look at cow parts -- here are two views of a snout (along with a bit of budgeting info!). Because of the date, I am presuming these cow sketches were research for my cow curtains, exhibited for the first time in November 1996 as part of "Pastures Green and Dreaming for Dad" at The Basement Gallery, Dundalk.

This sketch of my husband (before he was my husband) is from my 1993 day planner. I had to do a bit of research on this one to find out that "Last Temptation" was a tiny club in Toronto's Kensington Market. We were out providing support to a friend who was playing a gig there. It was February in Toronto, still cold -- my husband still has his scarf and coat on even though we would have been indoors. As I type this, it is February in Ireland and, though grey, outside my window I see lots of pink blossoms in bloom.

Irish Wave, China

Last week Fion Gunn (the main organiser of Irish Wave) posted some photos to dropbox to give the artists involved in the various shows an idea of what the shows looked like -- I don't think too many of the artists were able to go to China for the launches. 

 I am glad my cow curtain was free hung so that one could walk around it.  I like the shots of people at the exhibition seen through my curtain.  Fion also set up a FaceBook page for Irish Wave, now listed on my sidebar.  She posted separate albums for each venue, and there are 39 photos of artwork in situ at the TuShanWan Art Museum, Shanghai (there were two shows there, Gather and ReMade).

Dublin and Shanghai!

After the Big Egg Hunt artists event last week, James and I walked up to the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin in order to see the Francis Bacon Studio, which had been meticulously catalogued, taken apart in London and recreated in its chaotic entirety in the gallery in Dublin.  It is a fabulous exhibit, with accompanying interactive computer information as well as a room full of Bacon's research material and photos, so one really gets a sense of Bacon's working process.

On the way along the quays, I came across this bus signage which I though was totally surreal.

Last night the group exhibitions "ReMade" and "Gather" opened at the TuShanWan Art Museum in Shanghai. They are part of Irish Wave 4, an annual event of exhibitions from Irish based artists which take place in Beijing and Shanghai.  This is a photo of my work "Pastures Green" taken in the cow shed at Fernhill Gardens, Dublin in 1997.  The two cow curtains visible in the foreground are now being exhibited in Shanghai.