In Conversation with Mary Donnelly

by Deborah Watkins. Posted on February 3, 2016

03 Feb

Cover Image – ‘Sweet Song of Spring’ by Mary Donnelly

(This article will feature in the February edition of the Connemara Journal, out shortly.)

Mary Donnelly has lived and worked as an artist in Connemara for most of her adult life. She has received many accolades throughout her career, among them the Oriel Gallery Award for a landscape of distinction at the Royal Hibernian Academy in 2004. She also received the prestigious Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2013 and she has had solo shows in Dublin, Australia and New York. Her most recent show was in the Paul McKenna gallery in Omagh last autumn.

Originally from County Louth, Mary uprooted her painting studio from Dublin’s Temple bar in 1991 in search of a new landscape. She found in Connemara ‘a place of extreme weather and sublime beauty,’ conditions that would combine to feed her artistic practice here for the next quarter of a century. Mary takes her inspiration from the contours of Connemara, often seeking out quieter places – a small copse or field, rather than the dramatic mountainous peaks you might usually associate with the West of Ireland. Mary describes her landscapes as ‘groundless’ and many appear to exist without a distinct skyline or depth of field in the traditional sense. More significant for Mary is the metaphor this provides for an exploration of the transcendent nature of landscape. She views the line of the horizon as a sacred place where Heaven and Earth come together. The surface of her paintings appear suffused with a silvery light, the half-light of winter, Mary’s favourite season of the year. It is under this delicate film, that the land and it’s timeless mysteries are revealed – the hidden furrows of another era or the gentle arch of an animal grazing, as animals have grazed here for centuries.

‘Dusk, Cow with Calf’ by Mary Donnelly

In some paintings, the activity of man is evident in the form of a telegraph pole or the faint outline of a building, but it is always unobtrusive. Others paintings contain an object within the work – a wire strung across the canvas might indicate a fence. Mary explains that the external nature of the additional material may serve as a gateway or threshold for the viewer.

‘Frosted Darkness’ by Mary Donnelly

The poetry of Patrick Kavanagh was an early influence and Mary cites the poems ‘March’ and ‘Wet Evening in April’ especially. The lines from ‘March’ continue to resonate with her most current work –

‘There’s a wind blowing

Cold through the corridors,

a ghost-wind..‘

( Patrick Kavanagh 1904 – 1967 )

Other artistic influences include the sepia water colours of Victor Hugo, the light filled landscapes of J.W.M. Turner and the work of contemporary American artist Lawrence Carroll.

Music fills Mary’s studio, helping her to focus. Currently she is listening to ‘Stabat Mater’ by Italian composer Agostino Steffani and the music of contemporary mezzo-soprano Cecilia Bartoli. Mary quotes the words of William Blake who said that poetry, painting and music are ‘the three powers in man of conversing with paradise’

Most of the paintings are worked on for several months at a time, in some cases up to a year. Each begins with a drawing and layers are built up slowly and carved away to create the sense of a surface that has been revealed. Mary tells me that the best advice she has been given in relation to her art is to hold on to the adage to ‘never give up.’ I ask what advice she might give to aspiring artists and she replies; ‘to understand that being an artist is a privilege and to always remember that you are a seeker of truth.’

Mary’s work may be viewed in Clifden at the Lavelle Art Gallery or online at www.lavelleartgallery.ie

December Paintings

by Deborah Watkins. Posted on December 15, 2015

15 Dec

It’s been a while since I’ve posted about my painting and this is largely because I haven’t done a lot of studio work since September. This combined with the fact that our computer hard drive broke down, so I can’t process my photos as I normally would. Life has been been demanding in all sorts of ways since September that I could not have predicted. I have found myself embroiled in a variety of matters associated with a number of committees and other groups that have taken up far too much of my time and energy. My resolution for the new year is clear – I’m not going to take on any more battles and I am going to spend a lot more time painting. How wonderfully simple is that?

Getting back to being creative after an intensive period of work is always difficult and I think that there is a natural cycle of creativity – a time for industry and inventiveness and a time to slow down and prepare for the next busy period. I feel like I am somewhere in between at the moment as I am thinking about my next body of work but also keen to finish some pieces before Christmas. We sold the last of my seascapes a couple of weeks ago in our gallery and this has forced me to focus my attention in this direction. I wanted to make some winter seascapes, dark brooding ones that reflect the weather at the moment which is stormy and unpredictable. I imagine myself out at sea reaching back towards a shadow of land in the distance and in another piece, the sky is the dominant feature, broiling and curling over the waves beneath. Here’s a few photos – the quality isn’t great as I took them with my phone.

I’ve kept this image small as it is slightly out of focus and this is accentuated when it is reproduced larger – insert another pledge for the new year – sort out my computer!

Both of these pieces were worked over a relatively short period. I find that the work improves as I gain confidence with my ability to express a mood as freely as possible and this often happens during short energetic bursts of work. If I get bogged down in technicalities, the paintings lose this energy. I need to give myself permission to be in the landscape ( or seascape ) while I am working and to feel what it is like to be there. This might sound like fancy, but it is simply where I am at the moment with this work.

Rest while Winter Rages

by Deborah Watkins. Posted on January 17, 2015

17 Jan

Cover image and poem reproduced with kind permission from Angelica Dooley, Brigit’s Garden

Anyone familiar with my this blog will know that I am a great fan of Brigit’s Garden, the Irish wildflower sanctuary founded by Jenny Beale and designed by Mary Reynolds. Consisting of four interlocking gardens inspired by four celtic seasons – samhain (winter), imbolc (spring), bealtaine (summer) and lughnasa (autumn), the gardens incorporate a myriad of native Irish plants, a woodland area, lake, wild flower meadows as well as specially commissioned sculpture by Irish artists. It is a beautiful place to visit at any time of year but I think it is exquisite in early summer ( when the wild flowers are in full bloom ) and also in winter.

There is something about the winter garden that is compelling and moving. The image of the sleeping woman formed out of the earth and the bronze figure ( made by Linda Brunker ) at rest on the island have I believe helped me to appreciate the beauty of this season. I should explain that I have not always appreciated winter, especially since moving to Connemara almost twenty four years ago. Growing up in Kildare and the suburbs of Dublin, I had a fairly indifferent attitude towards the winter months but this is simply not possible in Connemara, where the climate has a kind of physical, elemental force. I struggled with it for many years, particularly as a young mother battling with the practicalities of moving small children around in bad weather.

The winter garden under snowfall reproduced with kind permission from Brigit’s Garden

What is it about this sleeping woman – rendered out of the earth and so delicately portrayed in bronze – that is so captivating? When you walk out onto the island, she seems so peaceful by the curve of the water, under the simple lines of the trees that for an instant you worry, in case she might be disturbed.

Close up of sleeping woman from Stream

Perhaps it is simply that she reminds us that there is a time for rest, in nature and in life and that this is natural and necessary. There is comfort in this tranquil interpretation of winter because it offers us calm and reassurance.

Thank you to Angelica Dooley who had given me permission to reproduce her beautiful haiku.

You can visit the garden website at www.brigitsgarden.ie

Lay down your sweet head

and rest while winter rages.

Charge your weary soul.

(Angelica Dooley)

The Edges of the Land

by Deborah Watkins. Posted on October 15, 2014

15 Oct

I’ve been working on a couple of paintings based on the Connemara coastline. I used some photos I took off the coast of Inishturk for reference. I started out with some texture in the form of paste which I applied directly onto a canvas board, in an effort to get some movement into the piece as well as surface texture. I had last winter in my mind and the destructive nature of the water which changed some parts of our coastline dramatically.

Textured paste on board

Next some colour – new greens just purchased ( mixed with a little brown ) blue, gold and white. I left the canvas to dry overnight at this point and continued working on some other boards.

First layers of colour

Here’s the finished piece. I’ve added more colour in the form of paint and acrylic ink. This one took only two sittings after which I felt it was ready to varnish. I developed the next two canvases a little further as you will see in the next post.

Finished paining

Winter’s end landscape

by Total WP Support Inc.. Posted on April 16, 2013

16 Apr

I’ve just finished this painting. The canvas is 12″ x 16″ and it’s based on some photos I took last month. The landscape had a bleached look to it that is only starting to change now. It’s unusual not to see more Spring colour here at this time of year but we’ve had a very long spell of unseasonably cold and dry weather which has delayed the new growth.

Here’s how this painting began. I’ve roughed in the composition and I’ve added some textured paste to the foreground.

Next some more colour. I decide to leave the background more or less as it is.

Next I concentrate on this gorge in the foreground. This represents an area of cut bog and I want it to contrast with the lightness of the grasses so I go in with lots of darks – sepias and earthy reds.

Here’s a couple of close ups below.

At this point I decided to add a little green to the piece. I chose a pearlescent silvery green below.

Now a bit of tidying up and just a little more green, this time it’s a sap green.

Proserpina

by Total WP Support Inc.. Posted on January 11, 2013

11 Jan

Cover image ‘Proserpine’ by Dante Gabriel Rosetti taken from Lankaart

I came across this song recently and loved the story behind it. ‘Proserpina’ was written by the late Kate McGarrigle and is performed by her daughter Martha Wainwright. It recalls the ancient Roman myth which tells of the birth of Winter.

One day when Proserpina, the daughter of Ceres – the Goddess of agriculture – was gathering flowers, she was abducted by Pluto, God of the Underworld and carried off to his kingdom. Ceres was consumed with grief and in her anger she scorched the earth, rendering the seeds useless and preventing new growth. Jupiter was forced to intervene and negotiate a compromise. He proposed that as long as Proserpina had not eaten anything while in the Underworld, then she would be set free. Pluto had however offered her part of a pomegranate, which she accepted. She could not be released but an agreement was reached whereby she would spend part of the year in the Underworld ( Winter ) and part of the year with her mother ( Summer ). When Proserpina is with Pluto the earth is cold and barren and when she returns to her mother, Ceres enriches the earth with her blessings of warmth and growth to welcome her beloved daughter home.

I love the romance of this story and the notion of the forces of nature as the will of the Gods, cursing and charming the Earth with their powers. It’s a soft wrath we have here in Connemara compared to other climates and what a lovely thought it is to imagine the rain as the lament of Ceres as so beautifully portrayed in this song.

Proserpina

Proserpina, Proserpina, come home to momma, come home to momma

Proserpina, Proserpina, come home to mother, come home to momma now

I shall punish the Earth, I shall turn down the heat

I shall take away every morsel to eat

I shall turn every field into stone

Where I walk crying alone

Crying for

Proserpina, Proserpina, come home to momma, come home to momma now

Proserpina, Proserpina go home to your mother, go home to Hera

Proserpina, Proserpina go home to your mother, go home to Hera now

She has punished the Earth, she has turned down the heat

She has taken away every morsel to eat

She has turned every field into stone

Where she walks crying alone

Crying for

Proserpina, Proserpina, come home to momma, come home to momma

Proserpina, Proserprina, come home to momma, come home to momma now

She has turned every field into stone

Where she walks crying alone

Proserpina, Proserpina, come home to momma, come home to momma

Proserpina, Proserpina, come home to momma, come home to momma now

Kate McGarrigle ( 1946 – 2010 )

Stratton Mountain Tragedy

by Total WP Support Inc.. Posted on December 21, 2012

21 Dec

Cover image ‘Stopping by the Woods on a Snowy Evening’ by Follow The Raven

I’ve been thinking about including this song somewhere on the blog for quite a while. It’s based on a poem written by Seba Smith in 1843 and collected by Helen Hartness Flanders in the 1930’s. I came to know it when I discovered the writing and music of Robin McArthur and I never fail to be touched by the words. It seems to me to be a fitting piece to include here on the brink of Christmas as a tale of love and loss and ultimately survival in Wintertime.

It’s a true story about a woman called Lucy Blake and her daughter Rebecca who got lost on Stratton Mountain in Vermont during a snowstorm in 1821. Writer and musician Robin McArthur is also a native of Vermont and she and her husband Tyler Gibbons form the band ‘Red Heart the Ticker.’ They have recorded ‘Stratton Mountain Tragedy’ in their album ‘Your name in Secret I would Write’. In an article in the arts website ‘Gwarlingo‘, Robin tells how she sang this song at the Marlboro historical society and how people there contributed their knowledge of the story. One woman said that every Spring she visits the cemetery where Lucy Blake is buried and noticed there was a red rose on her grave. She later found out that Lucy Blake’s ancestor still lives in town and puts a rose on the grave every Mothers day. Extraordinary how history can be brought to life and made real again through story and song – words and music connecting people through time and across generations.

These are the words.

Stratton Mountain Tradgedy

Cold was the mountain’s height

Drear was the pasture wild

As through the darkness of the night

A mother wandered with her child

As through the drifting snow she pressed

The babe was sleeping ‘neath her breast.

Bitter blew the chilly winds

Darker hours of night came on

Deeper grew the drifting snow

Her limbs were chilled, her strength was gone

‘Oh God,’ she cried in accents wild

‘If I must perish, save my child’

She took the mantle from her breast

Bared her bosom to the storm

As round the babe she wrapped the vest

She smiled to think that it was warm

One cold kiss, one tear she shed

And sank into that snowy bed

A stranger passing by next day

Spied her ‘neath the snowy veil

The frost of death was in her eye

Her cheek was hard and cold and pale

He took the robe from off the child

The babe looked up and sweetly smiled.

Seba Smith ( 1792 – 1868 )

Click on this link below to hear the song.

‘Stratton Mountain Tragedy’ by Red Heart The Ticker

I wish you all a happy and a peaceful Christmas and I’ll be back to you again sometime in January.

Deborah

Miry Place II

by Total WP Support Inc.. Posted on November 21, 2012

21 Nov

The last time I worked on this painting, it looked like this (below)

It sat around for a long while and every so often, I would pick it up and tinker with it, always feeling that it needed something more. Here are some of the stages I brought it through;

During this time, the seasons changed and those bright yellows turned into darker browns. I thought I’d try to reflect this in the piece and to darken the whole painting considerably. Here’s the result below.

It’s a far cry from where it started! It has completely lost the freshness it had early on. There was something there at the first stage that really worked – the deep blue and ochre colours against each other especially. Perhaps I should have left it as it was but it did seem to me to have an unfinished air about it. I was very unsatisfied with all these in between stages but I am quite happy with it now in it’s darker form. It does seem to me to reflect the darker hues of the landscape at the moment. What do you think?

Winter Waits

by Total WP Support Inc.. Posted on November 9, 2012

09 Nov

The first week of November has come and gone with more dry days than wet. It’s a remarkable thing here in Connemara where the rain is never far away. We feel grateful when we get a whole day of dry weather, even more grateful when we get two in a row. I find an excuse to go outdoors when it’s like this, everything else can wait; housekeeping, book keeping, laundry, shopping, even painting is put on hold. If I’m really organised I’ll put some washing out to dry first thing, so that I can leave guilt free.

I took these photos out on the bog road between Clifden and Roundstone. October’s gold has deepened to these Wintry hues, it’s brown all over and under – russety, chocolatey, chestnut brown. The light is low, shining across rather than above and making the brighter grasses glint like shards of coloured glass or metal.

The water makes a silvery stripe against the bog and there’s an inky blackness at the edges where the grasses are reflected. It makes me think of a pool of mercury sliding through the landscape.

There’s a stark kind of drama about it all, a bareness from the flat grey light of the sky that seems to muffle colour like sound. I like to track down the words, sometimes a verse to match the way the land looks. That’s how I stumbled across these lines from the poem ‘November‘ by John Payne. I think they fit the mood well – the setting is an empty stage and there’s more than a hint of darkness in the shadowy figure of Winter, laying in wait.

The tale of wake is told; the stage is bare,

The curtain falls upon the ended play;

November’s fogs arise, to hide away

The withered wrack of that which was so fair.

Summer is gone to be with things that were.

The sun is fallen from his ancient sway;

The night primaeval trenches on the day:

Without, the Winter waits upon the stair.

taken from ‘November‘ by John Payne ( 1842 – 1916 )

November

by Total WP Support Inc.. Posted on November 5, 2012

05 Nov

November is a difficult month. It’s the shock of losing the hour and the suddenness of it – it always feels more like losing two when overnight it’s dark at 6.00pm instead of 8.00pm. A sixth of the day gone, just like that, slipped out of the day and vanished into the blackness. I think the body reels from it for a while, misses the light without knowing what is the matter or what it is missing. It seems like a starker thing here in Connemara where nature is magnified; bigger spaces, bigger winds, giant silhouettes of mountains and grey days of rain in blustery torrents or invisible misty sheets. It’s taken me a long time to learn an acceptance of this and I have spent too much time resenting the end of the year and fighting the gloom of the approaching Winter with a grumble and a moan.

This changed for me after a trip to Brigit’s Garden just outside Galway city where I began to see the Winter garden sculpture (below) for what it is. This image of the sleeping woman is such a beautiful one. She is so peaceful looking and such a quiet, gentle figure in the space that you want to tiptoe around her for fear her slumber might be disturbed. Unexpectedly, it was she who woke me up to the reality of Winter as a necessary time in the cycle of the seasons. Just as we humans must sleep at the end of the day, the earth needs to rest and recover, to shed it’s leaves and all it’s colour and to sleep, so that it can prepare for new growth ahead. The secret for me was to see this changing time as a human form.

Image taken from Stream

Robert Frost has personified the gloominess we might feel at this time of year in his poem ‘My November Guest’ (below).

My November Guest

My Sorrow, when she’s here with me,

Thinks these dark days of autumn rain

Are beautiful as days can be;

She loves the bare, the withered tree;

She walks the sodden pasture land.

Her pleasure will not let me stay.

She talks and I am fain to list;

She’s glad the birds are gone away,

She’s glad her simple worsted gray

Is silver now with clinging mist.

The desolate, deserted trees,

The faded earth, the heavy sky,

The beauties she so truly sees,

She thinks I have no eye for these,

And vexes me for reasons why.

Not yesterday I learned to know

The love of bare November days

Before the coming of the snow,

But it were vain to tell her so,

And they are better for her praise.

Robert Frost ( 1874 – 1963 )

The humanising of sorrow in this poem lessens it. It is no longer an overwhelming feeling but a human being, a woman who has simply stepped in, although she is uninvited. Frost acknowledges her presence and by doing so he accepts these feelings while he tells of the beauty of Winter, the ‘faded earth’ and the silver ‘clinging mist’. It’s a struggle because she ‘vexes him for reasons why’ but he is listening and seeing nature’s beauty for himself, he has learned to ‘know the love of bare November days.’

As I think perhaps I have too.

Cover image is ‘Harsh Life’ by Inez Streefkerk