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.

Kingswood drawings!

The box I found last week contained drawings related to the house I grew up in, 293 Kingswood Rd. in Toronto. My family moved there in 1964 and my parents sold the house in 1983, when they both took early retirement and returned to Ireland. I pre-empted a trauma by getting "settled" in my own apartment in the spring of 1982. (For the record, I was hardly settled as I moved house very frequently in the 1980s!)

One of my homework assignments in my first year of art school (Central Technical School's Post-Secondary Art Programme) was to produce 4 pencil drawings with an architectural theme. The family home provided the subject; these drawings are in a folder dated April/May 1979. Judging by the angle on this drawing, I was sitting on the roof of the shed looking at the back of my house and the back porch (built by my Dad). 

This is the view from my bedroom window of the house and lane directly opposite ours.

This is the view of our wobbly fence leading to the lane, from the back porch.

Still a view from the back porch, this is looking at the shed in our yard, our neighbour's garage and the backs of the houses on the next street (Bingham Ave).

Another assignment from that class was to use pen & ink and ink washes to draw an architectural interior. This is the view from my bedroom down the hall to the bathroom.

The assignment here was to do a watercolour architectural drawing and once again the family home was my model. I remember sitting on the curb across the road from the house in order to do this watercolour, probably in May/June 1979.

In my second year Design class I was learning about architectural drawings from a more technical point of view but again I used my own house to get dimensions, etc., when producing isometric drawings. This is the bottom floor of the house.

This is the house cut in half!

After art school finished in 1981, I took a year off to do studio work and make some money in a job before going to York University for my Fine Arts Degree. One of the classes I took, I think in my third year (1984-85) was Experimental Directions. The professor for that course was the inspiring performance artist, Toby MacLennan. During her class there was a lot of story-telling as a basis for making work and as students we discovered how to tease out our stories. By this time my parents were in Ireland but my memories of the house where I grew up were becoming epic. I am sure this undated drawing done in crayon and soft pencil on the back of a piece of matte board was from that class and was illustrating a point in one of my stories. Looking at this memory drawing now and comparing it to the curbside watercolour of the house which was in front of me, I am impressed by my visual recall! Although I don't remember saving them, I obviously rescued all these drawings from purging oblivion simply because they were depictions of the house where I grew up.

Archive artworks - surprise find!

I was looking for something in the attic studio yesterday, when I decided to look in a large flat box. I found what I was looking for, but also found a number of early artworks that I didn't think survived my two Great Purges of the 1980s! The image below is a drawing I did of my sister, Tallie, with her new guitar and another sister's boyfriend, Ernie, with his guitar. I remember drawing this: it was xmas of 1972 or 1973 and I was using new art supplies (charcoal & large sketch pad) which was a present from one or both of my oldest sisters. I remember at the time being amazed at capturing a good likeness of Ernie. That is still the way I remember him!

When I was in grade 11 (1976/77) I did my first silk screen print in art class. We used the simplest of processes, cardboard stencils, for printing  and only had 4 colours available. I used a picture of my toddler nephew, David, in his xmas sailor suit to create my image.

Still a high school drawing, I know this portrait of my younger sister, Dee Dee (awake!) was from grade 12 (1977/78) because it has the initials of my art teacher from that year and a check mark in the bottom right corner of the pencil drawing.

Canvas Panels

As well as the enjoyment I get from looking at works of art when visiting art galleries and museums, I am always mindful of the way things are presented. It is interesting to examine the relationship between a piece of artwork and the architecture it is within, how it is hung on the wall, if it is framed or unframed and what might be the reasons for the way in which it is presented. It is liberating to me when I see artworks hung in atypical ways and sometimes that inspires me to come out of my usual way of working (i.e., painting on stretched canvas).

I think it was in the spring of this year that I decided to make use of leftover strips of canvas by sewing them together with loops at the top to facilitate future hanging. Here is the composite canvas hanging out to dry after I washed it, I had plans for it, a Fever Afterimages painting, but I wanted to do some monoprints and small paintings first (which I did -- images on previous posts!).

Yesterday I did an ironing job on the composite canvas and (with the assistance of my husband) hung it up on the studio wall. I am still not ready to start painting, as I want to put some texture on it, and also may have a few tiny works to do, but soon, soon...

Fever Afterimages - some finished paintings!

I've finished the other two small canvases, but I am posting the first one again so all three can be seen together. They are all the same size, 40.5 cm x 51 cm, acrylic on canvas, 2014. I created the texture before painting began by gluing newsprint onto the canvas.

Fever Afterimage 3:

Fever Afterimage 2:

Fever Afterimage1:

Dream Paintings

My huband has been teaching me how to use GIMP, an free software programme alternative to Photoshop. Since I regularly need to adjust colour, crop and resize images, I have been getting in some practice with old polaroids of artworks that I don't have properly documented. I am only doing the simple things to the image, so there is still a lot of "noise".

This painting is one of many paintings I did at the time based on dreams. Specifically, in the dream I was surrounded by water looking up at the sky and could see a red sailed boat on the horizon. I sold this painting sometime in the 1980s to a friend in Toronto who was an art conservator at the time but then got into alternative therapies. Recently she let me know that this painting is hanging in the new offices of her practice. I was delighted that it still has pride of place! I saw it after she had it framed over 25 years ago and it looked fantastic (if I do say so myself!). The painting is primarily acrylic on heavy watercolour paper; two of the hands are silver paper affixed to the ground before painting was complete. Though not visible in this picture, there are many white lines radiating from the stars in the pink sky which I created painstakingly with a ruling pen (do people still use this tool?). The piece is quite large, either 3 or 4 feet square. 

This painting is also about 3 or 4 feet square, acrylic on heavy watercolour paper and based on the same dream. I don't know if this piece is rolled up somewhere or was a casualty of one of my purges!

Also taken from a tiny polaroid, this image is an installation view of some paintings that were shown in Winters College gallery while I was at York University. It may have been spring 1986 or may have been earlier. This triptych and diptych are acrylic on canvas, each panel being 4' x 3'. They are again based on the same watery dream with the starry sky and red-sailed boat. I know most definitely that these paintings no longer exist, as they were destroyed in a purge before I moved countries and the stretchers were sold to Central Technical School for use by students in the post-secondary art programme.

 

Matisse and Me!

There is a huge show at the MoMa, New York about Matisse's cut-outs, and I have been enjoying all the images of works, films, photographs of Matisse in his studio, etc. that are available on the internet (the MoMA facebook page keeps posting them, so no need for me to reproduce here). The show was originally in London's Tate Modern last year, and somehow I missed the hype, so sadly didn't see it. Apparently the MoMA show is an expansion of that one. With all this imagery and information floating around, I have been reminiscing about my relationship with the master, who I freely admit has influenced my work. I think this is obvious from some of my very early work such as this Sleeping Dee Dee, oil on canvas,122 cm x 91.5 cm, 1980. 

The picture above is a re-photograph from a polaroid - I don't actually have any other documentation of this piece. I don't know if the painting still exists or not; I gave it to the model (my younger sister!) quite a long time ago.  As well as Matisse, I was also influenced by an unknown painter who attended Parsons School of Design in New York. Before I painted this, a friend of mine had started attending that art school, and a rep from the school came to give the students in my art school a talk. The rep handed out the PS of D prospectus which included a painting where the shadows were painted light blue. At the time this was a revelation to me and it is apparent that I did the same thing with my shadows at the first opportunity!

I did so many drawings and paintings of my sister while she was sleeping that friends who had not met her asked if she was ever awake. This Sleeping Dee Dee is smaller than the one above, oil on masonite. Again, I have no documentation of this other than this re-photograph of a polaroid.

This is an oil on masonite painting, also from 1980 of a woman who I had met in a bookshop near my art school. She was looking for a house-mate and I rented a room from her for one month, my first foray away from home.

Matisse's cut-out show also made me think of how I enjoy the playfulness of  art work. In 1989 I had a residency in the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, ostensibly to create new work for my first exhibition in Dublin. However, due to availability (or lack of) at the Centre, I had all but one drawing complete for the exhibition by the time I was granted the residency. In many ways this was very liberating: I was not under any pressure, had a large studio to work in, food was provided with fabulous dinners being prepared by someone else and a variety of artists (playwrights, poets, musicians, sculptors, performance artists, other painters) on location for lots of interesting discussions over coffees and dinners,

So once I had the last drawing complete for the exhibition (a large black and white, graphite, figure drawing), I changed direction and got out colourful pastels, scissors and blue tack. Using imagery from my dreams I created an entire temporary environment in the studio.

It was at The Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig that I met and became friends with Dublin painter, Pat Moran, who dubbed my studio "The Playroom". Unfortunately Pat died suddenly in 1992 at the age of 30, and is sadly missed by the Irish art scene where his expressionist, figurative painting and drawing is known.

Further to my interest in "cut-outs" as a process, this picture of me in 1993 with some of my paintings from the My Tower of Strength series shows how I used cut-outs (the birds above the paintings) to help me figure out composition puzzles.

Sorry for the poor quality of photos in this post, but all images are re-photographs of existing photos and used as part of my training in GIMP, a free software programme which I am learning in order to replace my reliance on PhotoShop!

More work on Fever Afterimages paintings

I have been working on the small(ish) paintngs of Fever Afterimages, slowly adding colour. The central yellow area here was originally a deep dioxazine purple (bits are still visible at the edges, so you can see how much a painting can change as I am working on it.

This is still very much in the early stages too.

I finished and signed this one today: Fever Afterimages 1, acrylic on canvas, 40.5 cm x 51 cm.

Directed Reading & Research!

In conversation with one of my sisters on the weekend, I found out about a free online course offered by Newcastle University via Future Learn. The course, Hadrian's Wall, tugged at my lifelong but unrequited interest in archaeology and I quickly followed the link my sister sent me and signed up! It is a six week course (starting last week, but it was easy enough for me to catch up) completely online, using written, visual and video aids to discuss all aspects of Hadrian's Wall -- it's architecture, social aspects, history, warfare, politics, etc.

Essentially the course is directed reading where the course participants can choose their own level of commitment -- you have the opportunity to interact with other students via a chat feed, take quizzes, do further reading (in each section there is further recommended reading). A visit to Hadrian's Wall has always been on my wish list and now I feel like I am getting closer to it.

While I was on the Future Learn website, I also signed up for two additional courses! "Shipwrecks and Submerged Worlds: Maritime Archaeology" is a four week course, starting next week, which is offered by the University of Southampton.

My visit to the archaeology museum in Antibes last year piqued my interest in maritime archaeology. Antibes was historically an Ancient Greek harbour and nearly everything at the beautiful little museum was found in the sea nearby from sunken ships. I loved this corner of the museum with all the barnacled storage vessels.

The third course I signed up for does not begin till Jan 2015 and is also a six week course: "The Archaeology of Portus: Exploring the Lost Harbour of Ancient Rome". Again, it is offered through the University of Southampton. I know there is some madness to my methods (it's not like I am lacking in things to do!) but these courses are giving me some directed reading and who knows how it will eventually manifest itself in my other work. It's all very exciting to me!

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!