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.

Collage Cards

With Valentine's Day just a few days after my wedding anniversary, my husband  & I celebrate the days together. As artists, both of us have been making cards for years. Sometimes I go with the simple and obvious -- like this year's card of hearts:

Whereas last year, at this time, I was working on my large painting, Fractured City, so the cityscape / sunrise mostifs kept appearing in my collage cards.

Before xmas I had been working on some video footage of people jumping and skipping, for my current work research. So the white tights and black shoes of one of my niece subjects appeared in a few cards (several family birthdays around that time).

 Here are several collage cards from last year that again utilised the cityscape / sunrise imagery. I have a box of various colours and types of paper that I use for my ripped-paper collages. I am always saving or finding bits of paper that I think are interesting. The paper for the background "sunrise" in this birthday card was a pre-painted silver-leaf square on thin rice paper; I bought a stack of this paper in Toronto's Chinatown nearly 20 years ago for $1! The "lit window" squares are ripped from green tissue saved from a xmas cracker party hat. I think both the dark blue and purple might also be tissue from party hats too.

At Easter time last year I was being more literal with my portrayal of the sun as circular -- it made me think of an egg yolk. The sky is again that Chinese paper, but an "error" as it was not prepainted. The purple stripey paper and the purple "windows" are from bits of pseudo stained glass craft paper, leftovers from my daughter's childhood supplies. They are a tough paper and I like ripping them to create a natural white ripped edge.

Grey Box Archive 3 - Dreams

I thought I would post some more pix from the so-called Grey Box Archive -- the box of small scale drawings & sketches that I re-discovered a few months ago. All the work in the box I had completely forgotten about, or if I had remembered any of it I thought I had destroyed ages ago. The following sketches are all based on dreams, all of which I remember having while in Ireland, except perhaps the last one, based on several dreams I had in Toronto in the summer of 1983.

Sketches above and below are from the same dream, about the house I grew up in Toronto. I remember having this dream while visiting my parents in Ireland during the summer of 1984.

I remember this being a very bright and chaotic dream -- moons and pink balloons seemed to be having an attic party, I came upon the party via a trap door in the floor (apparent on the left middle side of the drawing). This was another dream I had during that summer visit to Ireland in 1984.

Another moon dream, with a temple and journey to boot. Who knows. I think this was from either the 1984 holiday in Ireland or a later visit to my parents in 1987.

I know I did the next two dream collages while in Ireland, possible when I had moved over in 1988. 

The plane crash on the island did not refer to the Lockerbie disaster, though that event might have prevented me from sending this in the post as it was around that time.

In 1983 I had a series of dreams about dolphins, one of which was a group of dolphins leaping in turbulent waters. I then had a dream where figures were bouncing, foetally, in turbulent waters as an exact echo to the dolphin dream. I used these images of dolphins and foetal figures in water for many years in paintings and drawings. I started using the separated raining clouds after viewing clouds like this over the sea in Ireland in the late 80s and continued with that imagery (as gold rain) in many paintings and drawings between 1988 and 1992.

Grey Box Archive 2

 I mentioned a few posts ago that I discovered a box of drawings and sketches while looking for some paperwork. So I thought I would post a few more. The pencil sketch below is from the early 1980s, of the basement bar at the house where I grew up in Toronto. My parents returned to Ireland in 1983, so I was probably getting maudlin or nervous about the impending doom!

The wind is absolutely howling outside my window so this charcoal sketch seems appropriate. It is of the Irish Sea on a stormy day in either 1989 or 1990 when I had my earlier (second bout?) of living in this country.

In the summer of 1990 I returned to Toronto, and participated in a group show "Me & 9 Others" at the Orient Building at Queen & Bathurst. This is a sketch of the piece I later put together as part of an installation. It is an elongated house on a trellis. My Dad helped me build the house and the trellis (which in the final piece I painted yellow). In the final piece, you could peer in the window to see a figure surrounded by floating stars (made of fimo) and I wove live roses into the trellis, rather than scattering them; over the course of the exhibition they wilted and dried. Behind the sculpture was a large piece of paper, half left blank and the other half with an oilstick drawing of two waterspouts over a stormy sea. This piece is not documented very well -- I have a couple of polaroid details (somewhere...), The sculptural element was bought by poet Janette Platana, but that was 25 years ago, so I don't know if she still has it!

 This watercolour is from 1990 and was created in Ireland, but I don't remember exactly where -- Bray or Howth perhaps?

Visit to the Dead Zoo

My sister Yvonne, who is also an artist and owner of Yumart Gallery in Toronto (link on the sidebar) is visiting from Toronto. The other night, after a fondue meal at my place, we got into a discussion about museums. There was some dismay expressed over the reliance on computers and inter-activity to make museums more appealing to contemporary audiences. The perfect antidote to this was to visit some museums in Dublin the following day, starting with the Dead Zoo -- i.e. the Museum of Natural History.  The visitor is immediately charmed by gamboling shrubbery at the entrance to this museum in the heart of the city.

And then the visitor can be impressed by the skeletons of the prehistoric Giant Irish Elk (Megaloceros giganteus).

The jumbly display of stuffed animals and skeletons in the main hall is gorgeous in its variety. The museum is small and the architecture old. There is most definitely a musty odour but it is totally agreeable to the experience of this perfect example of a Victorian "cabinet" museum.

The display of primate skeletons is a clear Darwinian reminder of human development.

Airport Art

On my recent trip to the US and Canada, I welcomed the chance to spend some time with some airport art on arrival and departure!

At Chicago's O'Hare airport I was delighted to use this moving walkway, the installation of changing lights, "Sky's the Limit" by Michael Hayden, making it a great experience. I used this walkway on a previous visit to the US, but couldn't figure out where it had gotten to on my last visit. Turns out I wasn't flying United on my last visit and O'Hare is a big airport - this walkway is for traffic between two sections of United Airways terminal.

I had a few hours between flights so I was in no hurry, and enjoyed going back and forth on the moving walkway.

The first time I encountered this installation, I could hear Brian Eno music and thought it was part of the installation, but this time jazz was playing.

At Toronto's Pearson International Airport this Richard Serra sculpture, "Tilted Spheres", is another pleasant experience.

Again, I had a few hours to spare, waiting for my flight, so I got to engage with the acoustics -- sound is amplified so that people beyond the sculpture can hear what people within the sculpture are saying (or, as when walking under a bridge, barking...)

Art Gallery of Ontario

I was in Toronto recently and took the opportunity to visit the Art Gallery of Ontario to see some work that was on my wish list. The exhibition From the Forest to the Sea: Emily Carr in British Columbia was first shown in London last year at the Dulwich Gallery, but as I knew I'd be in Toronto this summer I looked forward to seeing it in the Canadian setting. Carr's paintings were well complemented by artefacts from the First Nations which inspired much of her work and it was a joy to see them together.

I prefer Carr's looser work on paper, but the installation view gives an idea of the scale at which she was working.

I can't remember whether or not this is one of Carr's experimental gasoline paintings, several of which were in the show (paintings on paper where gasoline was used as a medium for the paint!), but it is a good example of her looser painting style.

While at the AGO, I was delighted to also see a special exhibit of a pair of paintings by Tom Thompson. The Jack Pine, according to the gallery didactic, was the painting found on Thompson's easel at the time of his mysterious death in 1917.

The West Wind, another iconic Thompson painting, is also dated 1917.

The Thompson exhibit also included the sketches/small paintings of these works. While I did "exit through the gift shop", I also found my way into a room full of another Canadian painter's work. I have always liked David Milne's dry brush drawing/paintings so it was lovely to see a whole room full of them.

I did not have time to do any further explorations that afternoon at the art gallery, but it was inspirational to see the work of these three great Canadian painters.

The Tidal Series - Collages

In July I posted some images from The Tidal Series, pastel paper drawings plus what was left of a series of acrylic paintings -- a little figure that I had cut out from one of the 18  4' x 3' canvases! So I was pleasantly surprised that four collages from the series were in that drawing box I re-discovered a few weeks ago. I never expected these collages to still be in existance!

 Around this time (1986 perhaps?) I was getting ready for xmas and making cards. That year I had the brilliant, crazily time-consuming idea of making individual collage cards with the figure from the Tidal Series enjoying falling snow. Needless to say, this involved a lot of gluing tiny pieces of white paper onto about 50 cards... I know I still have a few of the cards myself, but the little card box they are in is somewhere in the black hole of my attic studio. I will eventually find them, but not today.

These four collages, though, are not greeting card sized; they are 55 cm x 37 cm. The coloured paper is mostly standard copier colour paper, but the interesting bits have other sources. In those days in Toronto (and environs) industrial estates had dumpsters that could be scavanged for great art supplies -- the glossy yellow paper, silver paper and gold tape (which I cut in thin lines) all came from a dumpster. The patterned turquoise of the figure's skirt is from wrapping tissue from a gift a friend gave me. I used a mix of matte and gloss medium as my glue, so there is an overall sheen on the collages. I still have some of the silver paper and gold tape with my supplies almost 30 years later and I still save interesting scraps of paper for use in collage cards that I still make for special occasions.

I love the combination of bright pink and silver, something I associate with a smallish Jackson Pollock painting I saw in New York on one of my early trips there. I am pretty sure the image below represents the last of the four collages that I made -- I thought the figure by this time was self-assured and had coralled the stars into the gold "net" formed by the gold lines emanating from her hands.

Archive drawings

Within that box I recently found, were a couple of works on paper that I didn't expect to see again! These are from a series I had been working on from 1983-1986. Some of the series were exhibited at York University, Toronto, towards the end of the 1985-86 school year along with my large dream paintings (a diptych & a triptych where each individual panel was 3' x 4'). The exhibition was a 3 person show in the large gallery of Winters College. The hand pieces from that show were exhibited that summer in Charyk Gallery, Downsview (a suburb of Toronto).

These works are mixed media on paper, 55 cm x 37  cm. While at York University, I took a few creative writing courses and remember that I was inspired by discussions of metonymy and thought it would be great to create visual metonyms: I started using the hand and its gestures to signify aspects of humanity and emotions.

In the above collage I used some of the silver paper sheets I found (dumpsters in the factory areas of Toronto were always great for unexpected art supplies -- I actually still have some of this paper 30 some years later!). After gluing pink tissue to some areas of the drawing I had a hey day with my graphite, watercolour pencils and a brush loaded with water.

I think the above piece was one of the earlier ones from the series (the fragility of paraffin on paper being a telltale sign) and I am positive it was not exhibited. I know I painted on the paper first, before applying the hands and then covering the two sides with wax hiding the lustre of the silver paper. I think the black lines are China marker. I did some more work with encaustic painting in the 1980s, but properly using beeswax, turpentine, oil paint and canvas or board NOT paraffin and NOT paper!

The above piece was not in the box but is from the hand series of the 1980s. It was included in the York and Charyk Gallery shows and had been again exhibited in 2005 during my "Coming of Age" exhibition in Wicklow. A few years ago there was a competition call for providing artwork to Europol's new building in The Hague. The criteria for the competition had very specific criteria that the artists had to meet (as well as not being involved in criminal activity!). While I thought this work met their criteria, the size did not fit into any of their specified categories. Happily, on enquiry, they gave me the go ahead to apply in a larger size category, purchased the piece and it now hangs somewhere in The Hague.

Street Art

The topic of street art is a huge one that interests me. I love being surprised by street art -- such as images of Space Invaders, colourful and pixellated as tiles affixed on building walls in both Bray and Barcelona, or plaster heads peering at me disapprovingly as I make my way home from the Harbour Bar in Bray! [This series, "Lose the Heid" was created by Bray-based Scots artist Gibb.]  I recently read an illuminating article in Brainpickings on Shepard Fairley, the street artist/graphic designer, known for his Obama "hope" posters. Fairey's "Obey" campaign is fascinating and he talks about it in this very short YouTube film directed by Brett Novak.

In Toronto in the 80s there was a street artist who bolted lacquered and painted books to public places (lamp posts, chain link fences around parking lots, etc.). I lived in the downtown area and was always happy and amazed to come across these pieces unexpectedly. The works were definitely site-specific with the image content subversively appropriate to their location. Unfortunately it never occurred to me to take photographs at the time. I do remember though that the pieces were noticed by the powers-that-be in the city; since property would be destroyed by cutting the bolts to remove the books, the decision was made to send a worker out to paint all the artworks white...At least one was missed near where I lived on Queen St. West, as it was bolted near ground level, and could only be noticed if, say, you were crawling home along the pavement (not that strange an idea at Queen & Bathurst in 1988).

In 1997 I took part in the Ireland & Europe exhibition/symposium hosted by the Sculptors Society of Ireland. I created a series of stencils which included the stars from the European flag and the name of each member country of the EU printed in both its own language and in Irish. The irony of being "allowed" to create graffiti on the streets of central Dublin (around Parnell Square) was not lost on me! I enjoyed the performative quality of the piece too, as I created the graffiti in broad daylight and spoke to anyone who stopped to enquire as to what I thought I was doing!

From 2009 to 2012 I (and various friends & members of family) engaged in the stickering project Placement© in which small stickers with images of my artistic oeuvre were surreptitiously placed at locations around the world. Cities such as New York, London, Toronto, Chicago, and Prague got their fair share of Placement© stickers.

But other locations included a ski chair lift in Lake Tahoe, USA

and overlooking the Mediterranean Sea at Antibes, France.

Quite a few placements were also made in smaller towns and rural areas of Ireland as well as unusual places on airplanes! For more information on Placement© look here.

Dream Drawings Part 2 c 1985/86

The following images are more transfers from slide to digital. They were a further development on my left hand dream drawings, done while I was at York University in Toronto under the tutelage of sculptor Hugh Leroy. I can only generally date them from the setting in the dreams so I figured around 1985 and/or 1986 (my last year of uni). I had a big batch of standard 26" x  40"  cartridge paper that I used for my drawings; the following drawings are done in chalk pastel. The dream below clearly takes place in my batchelor apartment on Kingston Rd. in Scarborough, with a depiction of one of my large diptych paintings in the background, surrounded by my beloved stereo & Boston Acoustic speakers (100 watt per side!), records and a dead baby. This was a very sad dream, despite the fair going on outside the window, and I later associated it with the death of my soul. This is the first instance that I recall of me using the figure in the red top and green skirt to represent myself. I later used elements of this dream in my poem "Portrait", published in The Sunday Times New Irish Writing in 1989.

"The Blood Bears Fruit"  - some very obvious but intense imagery in this dream!

"The Second Coming: Evil"  - I remember this nightmare began as a calm moment and then all hell broke loose.

"The Second Coming: Good"  - and this one began with a lot of chaos and running through corridors until I came upon The Virgin of the Rocks -- safety and calm.

"The Water Meets the Bluff"  - although I remember this was a confusing dream, it had very specific imagery and colour (like the more saturated colour between the shadow of two branches on the sand and the change of colour in the water where the figure is about to dive).