Feeling woolly!

I am happily overloaded with bags of wool! I have loads of Cass Art bag-for-life bags (Cass Art is a great art supply chain in the UK that I visit every time I am in London) and they are great for holding skeins of wool and then hung from the end of the banister in the stairwell...

Though it is coming along slowly (still having pains in my wrist if I do too much at once) I am happy with the way my African Flower blanket is coming along. I realised that since I was going to introduce some new colours (wine/maroon, grey, sarasota orange, emerald green) I had to make some more flowers using those colours before continuing crocheting the flowers to the blanket. 

A closeup of some of the flowers I am working on.

I am also sorting the flowers according to their outside colour. The overall design of my blanket is that the petals are a specific red (it's a poppy-cadmium colour) and the joining colour is cream, but all the inner and outer colours are not repeated (so colours with the same outer colour never have the same inner colour and vice versa).

I have also started another blanket. The "Mile-a-Minute" blanket pattern uses three colours to create oblongs which are then sewn together. My main problem is trying to keep track of counting numbers as the pattern starts with chaining 206! So I have count that about six times...

Fever Afterimages - painting!

After the past week of lovely weather and dealing with the damsons - picking & canning (jams & chutneys) - I have finally gotten a chance to get back to the studio. So, I have been working out the compositions of my three small paintings in the Fever Afterimages series.

 And have started to add some colour.

I have always liked the contrast between this chromium green and the purple/pink/blue combo. But this is just the start, so who knows what it will end up looking like!

Damsons & Blackberries!

We had a fantastic summer and we continue to have a fantastic autumn! Last Sunday and the Sunday before we had gone for afternoon family strolls in the woods up the side of Bray Head with the express purpose of collecting blackberries. Now there are plenty of pie-sized blackberry packages in the freezer for future use, and I made my first blackberry-apple pie of the season. Delicious with cream...

My husband and daughter kept spotting all the different types of mushrooms...

We don't know which ones are edible, but hopefully will find out soon as my husband is going on an organised foraging walk this Sunday with the experts.

I love mushrooms, but certainly am no fool. Every time I see mushrooms in the wild I am reminded of the film The Beguiled (starring Clint Eastwood and Geraldine Page) and the sorry ending Clint had...

Yesterday a rural friend invited my husband and I down to her place to enjoy the morning picking damsons. Her tree was the motherlode! My husband affixed a ladder to the tree and was wholeheartedly picking when our friend had a great idea...

...he could prune the tree and we could pick damsons at ground level!

We went home with a bushel of damsons and a few apples to complement blackberries in a soon-to-be-made pie. I've now got damsons stewing for jam, my husband has started several bottles of damson liqueur and is going to start some damson wine today. Oh halcyon days of autumn!

Sept 3 1995 - RIP Dad

It's been 19 years since my Dad passed away. Where did that time go? Dad is a presence in my life, most especially obvious in my love of music. My Dad was a musician (double bass and guitar) and a carpenter. Though I don't play any instruments, music is an important part of my life and I have always loved making things -- painting being my prime focus.

In 1996 my double installation exhibition in The Basement Gallery (Dundalk) entitled "Pastures Green and Dreaming for Dad" was both a memorial to my Dad and a celebration of life. After passing through two large painted curtains of calla-lilies in the smaller room, one encountered a small icon diptych. The curtains were set away from the wall in such a way that the lighting cast a great shadow. The curtains are each 226 cm x 162.5 cm, acrylic on polyester net curtain.

Calla Lilies Icon (Dreaming for Dad), mixed media on handmade paper, 17.5 cm x 25 cm (diptych).

Recently I came across a reference to William Shatner meeting a "sawyer" at a desert diner and wondering what that was. Well I had never heard the word in terms of someone who played the saw musically, but that was how it was explained to Bill...It reminded me, however, of my Dad and the day he bought me a lovely saw and then pulled out his bass bow and showed me that the saw could be played to produce an eerie sound.

Dad, mixed media on wood, 23 cm x 15.5 cm, 2009, collection of Tallie Whelan, Ireland.

Growing Up...For Elise

The other day my daughter was asking me questions about "growing up" and the perspective of an adult as opposed to a child. I don't think my responses were coherent, but it certainly got me thinking about the upcoming changes. Last night a parent-student meeting was held at my daughter's new school as she started secondary this week (in Ireland, secondary school starts after grade six is finished - there is no in-between transitions as there are in the public school system of Canada). Of course the years have gone by in the blink of an eye yet the memories and emotions relating to the my daughter's birth remain fresh. In 2005 my husband and I had a joint exhibition "For Elise" in honour of our daughter, with our work (my husband is a sculptor) inspired by her birth three years before and the new parenting experience for both of us. So here are a few images of some of my work included in that exhibition.

The two stripes of a positive pregnancy test made their way into a number of my paintings, including this one from 2004, "Positive", mixed media on paper, 15 cm x 23 cm.

 Pears, to me, are an appropriate symbol of fecundity. One of my aunt's had given me a bag of pears from her garden in 2000 before I was pregnant and I did a lot of drawings of them before eating! They also made their way into a lot of work at this time. This is "Worth the Wait III", mixed media on handmade paper, 17.5 cm x 25 cm, diptych, 2003.

"Good News I", mixed media on handmade paper, 17.5 cm x 25 cm, diptych, 2003.

"The Happiest Day II", mixed media on handmade paper, 17.5 cm x 25 cm, diptych, 2003.

One aspect of my work at the time looked at objects of my daughter's affection and I began painting her favourite toys. At 12 my daughter still adores her stuffies! "Mr Happy", mixed media on canvas, 30.5 cm x 25 cm, 2005.

Nicolas de Stael - Picasso Museum, Antibes

 I was in Antibes last week enjoying the company, hot weather and warm water of the beautful blue Mediterranean! I also had the chance to enjoy a visit to the gorgeous Picasso Museum at the Chateau Grimaldi. This year is the 100th anniversary of the birth of Nicolas de Stael (born Jan 5 1914) whose work is well represented at the Picasso Museum. To mark the anniversary, there was a special exhibition "The Nude Figure, 1951-1955" which included work borrowed from other collections as well as works in the museum's own collection. This is a photo of de Stael in his studio, easily found with a google search. I especially love photos of artists in their studios!

This painting, "Portrait of Anne" was in the large exhibition entrance room (the one that contains the huge musical painting from the permanent collection - I posted a picture of it after last year's visit). De Stael had a daughter named Anne, but I do not know if this is a painting of her.

The second room of the exhibition contained a lot of large, minimal line drawings, ink on paper which I enjoyed looking at.

There was a smaller room with medium size charcoal drawings and line drawings.

I love the broad strokes of charcoal defining the figure by it's shadow only.

 "Reclining Nude, Blue" is in the permanent collection and usually on display whenever I am at the Picasso Museum. It is always a pleasure to see.

I wished that the catalogue to the exhibition had an English translation as there were a lot of images reproduced. Unfortunately only the introduction had been translated and flipping through it I could see that there was a fair amount of text!

Fever Afterimages - oilstick drawings

A few years ago - my concept of time is in fluxus, so who really knows how long ago it really was - one of my other artist sisters said she was only going to use materials she had to hand before she started buying new materials. With a studio full of, well, everything, I think this is a good idea but one I have not been good at sticking to. However, when I came across some card which I had prepared with gesso and an undercoat of paint some years ago, I thought the pieces would make a good base for some oilstick drawings. I located my large cookie tin of oilsticks, which I haven't looked at in some years. Oh good, they are still usable! So here is my drawing set-up, with the first of three prepared cards ready to exploit. My trusty jar of Swarfega gel hand-cleaner (green lidded red jar at left) has liquefied over the years but it still works a treat at the end of a drawing session!

I haven't yet given a title (other than "unitled") to these drawings which are part of my Fever Afterimages series.

All three drawings are oilstick and graphite on gessoed card.

44 cm length x 50 cm width.