Paris & Painting

by Total WP Support Inc.. Posted on October 10, 2012

10 Oct

We had a magical time in Paris with the kids last week. It was a dream for us to be able to take them to this beautiful city and share in their excitement as they saw some of it’s treasures for the first time. It’s been more than twenty years since my last visit so the excitement was just as real for me too. We tried to make the trip as family friendly as possible and included trips to the wonderful Cite des sciences et de l’industrie ( Science museum – full of interactive games and challenges for kids ) a night time visit to the top of the Eifel Tower and a day trip to Euro Disney. We also wanted them to see the Musee d’Orsay, more child friendly perhaps then the Louvre and full of original paintings that they have seen reproduced in print and modern media in their own lives. They immediately recognised Van Gogh from his self portrait below.

‘Portrait de l’artiste’ ( Self Portrait ) by Vincent van Gogh

I remember being struck by the vividness of the colours when I saw these paintings in the late 1980’s. They are so clear and bright that it’s hard to believe that they are real and I imagined that perhaps the hazy originals lay in a dark vault somewhere, the worlds best kept secret. This radiant, vibrant, intense colour takes your breath away and each mark sings out against the one beside it. The texture of the paint really made an impact on me this time, the depth of it and the clear impression of each stroke, as if the weight of the hand behind it had been taken away just a moment ago, the shadow of it still there like the presence of someone having just left the room.

‘La Nuit Etoilee’ ( Starry Night ) by Vincent van Gogh

Detail of Starry Night by Vincent Van Gogh

I was also greatly moved by the paintings of Henri Toulouse-Lautrec. Unlike Van Gogh, the paint is sketchy and thin but nonetheless full of vigour and energy. This one below is called ‘Le Lit’ ( The Bed ). It is such an intimate scene and must have been quite shocking at the time as it appears modern even to our eyes.

I love the roughness of the lines and the sweeps and smudges of paint that he has made with such conviction. He seems to have cast all convention aside, all notions of what a painting should look like and lost himself in the desire to bring this scene to life with all it’s nuances of tenderness, sleepiness, attachment and warmth. It is so wonderfully human and surely made by a man who knew this moment himself, really felt it so that he was able to put it down so earnestly and faithfully.

I also loved this next painting called ‘Seule’ ( Alone ).

It’s a study made on cardboard of a woman lying on her back across an unmade bed, her long limbs in a pose of complete collapse and abandon. I’m wondering who she was – her black stockings and light dress suggest that she might be a prostitute and we know that the artist liked to go to brothels. He moved in permanently at one point so that he could observe and capture the women where they lived and worked. He makes no judgment on her however and she might just as well be a worker or any other ordinary person captured at a very private moment.

The overriding feeling in all of these paintings is the sense of them having been made by a human hand. The magic of this wonderfully versatile material and the relationship between it and the artist is paramount. The energy and the will behind each stroke is clearly visible and I think there is enormous value in being able to read this expression. It makes me question the point of photo realism and any other technique of painting which disguises the material. Really, what is the point? There is so much humanity and feeling in these works because of the way that they were made and it was a huge pleasure and an inspiration to see them again.

What do you think about this point of view?

Cover image ‘Church at Auvers’ by Vincent van Gogh taken from John Brody Photography

The Crossing

by Total WP Support Inc.. Posted on September 24, 2012

24 Sep

This short film was made by Clifden based photographer Kevin Griffin. It portrays the crossing of cattle from the mainland to a nearby island by the Bourke family who have been doing this for hundreds of years.

I think that the film faithfully captures something of the essence of this place – it’s traditions, the physicality of farming life, the quiet resilience of the people and the breathtaking beauty of a landscape that is impossible to take for granted.

‘The Crossing‘ will be shown in Ohh! By Gum, Station House Courtyard, Clifden during Clifden Arts Week 20th – 30th September 2012

Cover image taken by Kevin Griffin

Captivating Brightness

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

21 Sep

So we stopped and parked in the spring-cleaning light

Of Connemara on a Sunday morning

As a captivating brightness held and opened

And the utter mountain mirrored in the lake

Entered us like a wedge knocked sweetly home

Into core timber.

taken from Ballinahinch Lake a poem from the collection entitled Electric Light by Seamus Heaney

The 35th Clifden Arts week festival is upon us and there is a rich and varied programme that encompasses the visual arts, poetry, music, dance and performance. It is one of the very best times to be in Clifden and because it is a community arts week no section of our population is excluded as the artists visit and perform in our schools and throughout the community. The ten day festival concludes on Saturday night next with a lantern-lit costume parade and aerial dance performance. This is always a spectacle and involves local national and secondary school children under the guidance of the multi disciplinary ‘Fidget Feet’. This year we are honoured to welcome President Michael D. Higgins who officially opened the celebrations last night.

‘Captivating Brightness’ is the title of an exhibition that was specially curated by IMMA ( The Irish Museum of Modern Art ) to celebrate the festival and to pay homage to Irish artists in the last century who have drawn on the West of Ireland for their inspiration. The title for the show was taken by kind permission from Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘Ballinahinch Lake’ (above). This impressive exhibition includes paintings by Jack Yeats, Paul Henry and Mainie Jellett alongside contemporary works by artists such as Dorothy Cross, Barrie Cooke and Sean McSweeney. I went along to the show which was launched by Mary Banotti. Speakers also present were Christina Kennedy – Senior curator and Head of Collections IMMA, Desmond Lally – Arts Committee, Clifden Community Arts festival, our very own Brendan Flynn who is founder and leading light of Arts week and Eamonn McLoughlin.

Mary Banotti spoke about the ghosts in the room – a century of artists brought together and bound together directly or indirectly by the landscape of the West. Paul Henry’s ‘Lake and Blue Mountain’s of Connemara’ (above) depicts the landscape sensitively and just as it is. Other artists such as Louis le Brocquy and and Mainie Jellet spent time here while others such as Gerard Dillon made Connemara their home.

Christina Kennedy talked about this exhibition as part of IMMA’s wish to bring art back to the people. There is an enormous sense of this and I had to remind myself that I was standing in the old Supervalu in Market Street ( now a transformed space ) and not in a gallery in our capital city. It’s proper place you might say, where it all began and now returns. Yet it is still a remarkable thing and a credit to the Arts week committee and the high esteem with which this Clifden festival is held Nationally and Internationally. Enjoy it while it’s here.

Megaceros Hibernicus by Barrie Cooke

Saddle by Dorothy Cross

Bogland – Seamus Heaney

by Total WP Support Inc.. Posted on September 10, 2012

10 Sep

I came across this photograph with Seamus Heaney’s poem ‘Bogland’ on the Connemara Heritage and History site. It is such a beautiful image and it mirrors the words of this poem perfectly.

Seamus Heaney is of course our very own Nobel laureate and arguably one of the most celebrated and popular poets in the world today. This poem was written in 1969 and is regarded as a milestone in Heaney’s career because it was here he first realised ‘an image for the unconscious part of Ireland through a natural part of the landscape where history reposed and was revealed’ * I love this idea of the bog as a metaphor for our psyche, our subconscious and our innermost secrets. It also brings to mind a tree with it’s outer crust and hidden rings underneath, circling time and out of sight until the surface is broken.

Heaney alludes to the ancient bog bodies in much of his early poetry, particularly the viking bodies found in Denmark in the 1950’s. One of these is Tollund man, a male body which has been carbon dated to 230 BC. This man received a violent death like many of the other bog bodies and Heaney has used this in his poems as a political analogy to the unravelling violence in Northern Ireland. Grauballe man was found two years after Tollund man, also in Denmark. Heaney wrote a poem in his honour which begins;

As if he had been poured

in tar, he lies

on a pillow of turf

and seems to weep

the black river of himself.

taken from The Grauballe Man

Such beautiful, tragic and human imagery. It is thick with blackness, a darkness and a beauty that feels uniquely Irish.

The poem ‘Bogland’ has a different perspective. It starts with a comparison to the vast prairies of America. Later, there is an image of ourselves ‘striking inwards and downwards’ – self searching rather than the explorative, outward search of the early American pioneers. He concludes that ‘the wet centre is bottomless’. Here too an image of blackness, like space, a romantic void of disappearing sludge that is rooted in earth and has the preservative qualities of the womb but which falls away to some vast infinite place.

Bogland

We have no prairies

To slice a big sun at evening –

Everywhere the eye concedes to

Encroaching horizon,

Is wooed into the cyclops’ eye

Of a tarn. Our unfenced country

Is bog that keeps crusting

Between the sights of the sun.

They’ve taken the skeleton

Of the Great Irish Elk

Out of the peat, set it up

An astounding crate of air.

Better sunk under

More than a hundred years

Was recovered salty and white.

The ground itself is kind, black butter

Melting and opening underfoot,

Missing its last definition

By millions of years,

They’ll never dig coal here,

Only the waterlogged trunks

Of great firs, soft as pulp.

Our pioneers keep striking

Inwards and downwards,

Every layer they strip

Seems camped on before.

The bogholes might be Atlantic seepage.

The wet centre is bottomless.

Seamus Heaney

* taken from Landscape or Mindscape? Seamus Heaney’s Bogs by Diane Meredith, The University of California, Davis.

Cover image taken from Connemara Heritage and History

Belonging

by Total WP Support Inc.. Posted on September 3, 2012

03 Sep

I came to the West of Ireland when I was in my twenties so I am not from this place.

I’ve been thinking about this recently, how Connemara has become my adopted home and how privileged I am to be able to live and work here. I’ve also been thinking about my grandfather who was a farmer in Leixlip, County Kildare where I grew up. He made his living from the land but in a different kind of Ireland, one of struggle and deprivation the like of which I have never known. His working days would have been long and hard, tending his few cattle and working the soil as best as he could. I’m sure that he often felt anxious about meeting the needs of his large family and it was a terrible shock for them all when he passed suddenly at just 46 years of age. I hope that while he was alive and in spite of the hardship, he was able to draw strength from the land and from his honest work in the clear fresh air with nature as his companion. The perspectives are so different – different generations, different eras on opposite sides of the country. For all of this, I like to imagine that perhaps we have shared an appreciation and a gratitude for the same things.

This brings me to Robin MacArthur, a writer and musician that I’ve had the pleasure of discovering recently. Robin is from the New England area of the northeastern United States and she lives and works in a place that was inhabited by her ancestors in Marlboro, Vermont. I am intrigued by the sense of belonging that this must bring. There is something very powerful about such a long thread of attachment through time and family and Robin’s consciousness of this is immediately apparent in her creative work. I discovered an essay by Robin called ‘Abandoned Landscapes‘ in which she explores and celebrates the use of landscape in fiction and makes a plea for it’s return. I immediately connected with the sentiment – this little excerpt summarises the piece well;

‘Big sky, memory, erasure, allegory, history, decay, and metaphor; all acknowledge that we as human beings are still connected and a part of the physical world around us. Landscape, in its myriad forms, takes us literally “outide” of the self. And this escape from the self is, for me, at the heart of what I yearn for in life and in fiction.’

taken from Abandoned Landscapes by Robin MacArthur

I went on to discover that Robin is also a blogger ( woodbird, them mornings ) and a talented musician and band member with her husband Tyler Gibbons ( Red Heart the Ticker ). Her sense of belonging and reverence towards the land and it’s gifts is woven delicately but firmly through her writing and her music which I encourage you to discover for yourself.

Here is Robin’s “Love letter to Vermont,” which aired on NPR’s State of the Re:Union. It is accompanied by photographs taken by Sara Brooke Curtis and the music is by Red Heart the Ticker. It is a love letter and a thank you letter and a prayer all at once and it is written and spoken from the heart.

Cover image taken from woodbird, them mornings

Polar Places

by Total WP Support Inc.. Posted on August 18, 2012

18 Aug

I came across an artist on etsy.com recently whose work I really connected with. I think this was particularly so in light of my own recent work about an imagined frozen landscape. The artist is Karinna Gomez from Fairbanks, Alaska in the United States. She makes small series of prints – mezzotints, woodcuts and etchings, sometimes handcoloured with watercolours as with the print above. This piece is called Persimmons in the Snow. Persimmons are an orange red fruit that grow on the Ebony tree. These trees can tolerate and adapt to a wide range of climates including harsh Northern weather. I love the striking contrast between the white hills and snow covered valley and the dark central group of trees that are lit by by these red speckles, a kind of earth bound constellation. I love too the vastness and silence that is suggested by the empty retreating hills and the dark sky beyond them. The only colour in the piece and the only sign of growth and life is this tiny little fruit. My second favourite piece (below) is like the first. This one is called Land of Weather .

The features of the previous piece are here, light versus dark and a grouping of dark fruit lit trees. There is more sky here though and an icy breeze seems to move across in a flurry of cloud. The central grove is bowl shaped and is cradled by the expansive landscape on all sides. They stand like a resilient group of survivors struggling against the elements.

The last piece I have included here is a mezzotint called Icelandic Water below. This is a slightly different printing technique which allows half tones of colour to be produced.

Darkness dominates this piece, punctuated only by white streaks and lights. The snow capped mountain in the background makes way for the night sky dotted with a few tiny stars. The title suggests that the large expanse in front might be water. It is broken up with bright uniform shapes that look like something man made or are they reflections or perhaps both? When I wrote to Karinna, she told me that she is drawn to the histories of polar exploration and aspects of Northern life such as self sufficiency, independence and solitude. Also the weather, land and geography of the North. Her work is an attempt to make imagery that expresses these primary interests.

If you like what you have seen here, check out Karinna’s work in her etsy shop. Her beautiful limited edition prints are very reasonably priced.

Paul Henry

by Total WP Support Inc.. Posted on July 23, 2012

23 Jul

I’ve been looking at some of Paul Henry’s landscapes recently and thought I might write about them here.

Henry was an Irish artist who was known especially for his West of Ireland landscapes. He was born in Belfast in 1887 and he studied art in Paris before his return to Ireland where he lived and worked on Achill Island (1910-1919) off the Mayo coast for many years. While in Paris, Henry was greatly impressed by the modern avant-garde movement of the time and the bold colourful works of Cezanne, Van Gogh and Gaugain. Landscape painting was no longer just about realism but about colour and energy and the individual mark of the artist’s hand. I love this quote by S.B. Kennedy in his book on Paul Henry where he describes these new ideas of the time:

“Cezanne and Van Gogh saw clearly because they had cast aside all the theories and prejudices of the Schools and were looking at nature as if for the first time, and above all seeing it with emotion.”

This notion of seeing landscape with emotion really resonates with me because it seems to me that this is what painting is all about. I imagine then how Henry must have taken these new ideals and applied them to our own peculiar landscape and weather conditions, without the heat and intensity of the mediterranean sun. He recognised the singular beauty of the landscape and the light in the West of Ireland and he learned to articulate this using his own palette of muted colours. The painting above is called ‘Errigal County Donegal’ (c.1930 Image taken from imma.ie ) and it demonstrates this very well. The setting seems to shimmer in a kaleidoscope of greys tinged with blue and pink against the golds and browns at the base of the painting.

This next image below is an earlier work (c.1922-23) called “The Bog at Evening’. I love the simplicity of this composition – mountain, horizon line, turf and water. I admire the contrast that he has set up between the shadowy dark browns of the turf and purple mountain and the delicate pinks and pastels in the billowing cloud shapes. The reflections of the clouds in the bog water and the low evening light give the painting a perfect stillness where only the evidence of human activity now remains.

Image taken from D7ET website

This next painting is called ‘West of Ireland Cottages’. Once more, the atmosphere dominates this piece, the vastness of the sky and mountains over the small settlement of cottages. The strong blues of the mountains sing against the yellow of the thatch and gold of the bog, a perfect example of how complementary colours can be used together with great effect.

Image taken from Christies.com

This last painting (below) is called Bog Road. It uses similar colours but the tones are more subdued in the top two thirds of the canvas. The lightness of the sky contrasts strongly with the dark stacks of turf. The middle ground is highlighted with a streak of gold where the sun drops down between the clouds and sits beautifully against these ribbons of blue that he uses to describe the receding hills.

Image taken from Mayotoday.ie

Perhaps the most impressive aspect of Paul Henry’s work for me is it’s apparent simplicity. Many of his greatest paintings seem at first glance to be composed of a simple arrangement of shapes and colours. It is the degree of complexity and subtlety within these seemingly simple choices of colour, tone, shape and gesture that make them so exceptional in my opinion. As a painter, I have so much to learn from these paintings!

What do you think about them? Do you think that they are relevant to day or have anything to do with modern Ireland?

Brigit’s Garden

by Total WP Support Inc.. Posted on July 2, 2012

02 Jul

I went on a trip to Brigit’s Garden recently with my family. This is a not-for-profit organisation and a registered charity set up by Jenny Beale out of her passion for nature and the environment. The gardens were designed by Irish landscape designer Mary Reynolds who was the first Irish person to win a gold medal at the prestigious Chelsea flower show and is arguably one of the best designers in the country. The gardens are located in Rosscahil which is just a few miles outside Galway city. They are set within an 11 acre site of native woodland and wildflower meadows and they celebrate our natural landscape in a design based on the four Irish seasons. These four gardens interconnect and take us on a journey through the Irish seasonal festivals of Samhain, Imbolc, Bealtaine and Lughnasa. The gardens mirror the cycle of life from conception and birth through to old age and death.

Samhain ( Halloween ) begins on the 31st of October and marks the beginning of the yearly cycle. It is celebrated here in the winter garden (below) which pays homage to a time for death but with the promise of re-birth. It is a period of sleep and reflection which is evoked by a mound of earth that has been shaped into the sleeping body of a woman wrapped around a pool. Another figure made of bronze leaves rests on the ground in an island within the pool. She is listening to the earth, waiting for it to stir again and bring forth new life.

Image taken from Pbase Gallery

Image taken from Stream

Imbolc is the Spring garden. This is the old Irish name for the festival that welcomes the arrival of Spring on February 1st, now known as St. Brigit’s Day. In the cycle of life, it is the garden of youth where children can play and enjoy the basketwork swings and a wildflower meadow.

Image taken from Signpost Tours

Here’s one of my photos of the Spring Garden (below) with wild flowers in full bloom.

May day heralds the festival of Bealtaine which is celebrated in the Summer Garden. This is a time of young adulthood, sexual awakenings and marriage. The garden tells the story of Diarmuid and Grainne, the fleeing lovers in Irish mythology. Their bed is a grassy hollow facing the sun and a path of standing stones leads to a throne where the lovers unite and sit together, masters of their own destinies.

The Autumn garden marks the festival of Lughnasa which begins in August. It is a time of harvest and celebration. Spiral beds contain herbs for cooking as well as healing (below).

Two circular lawns interlink and are circled by columns of stone to allow space for dancing. There is a long table for feasting and celebration. Three yew trees mark the exit of the Lughnasa Garden which signifies the end of the cycle and the possibility of renewal which lies ahead.

Image taken from Stone Art Blog

There is much more to see and enjoy here as well as the four symbolic gardens. There’s a giant sun dial, a woodland walk, a living willow play area for children and a place to hang wishes (photo below).

This is a view of one of the wildflower meadows from the woodland walk (below).

I spotted this owl in a tree (below) which I hadn’t noticed on previous visits. The unexpected is part of the magic of this place..

You can round off your visit as we did in the cafe which offers delicious home baked cakes! I’ll be going along again soon and I’d recommend it to anyone, especially at this time of year when the wildflowers are in full bloom.

Inspiration – Kathe Kollwitz

by Deborah Watkins. Posted on May 23, 2012

23 May

I have been thinking about the importance of having access to meaningful imagery in ordinary life. There is something immeasurable about the affect of a beautiful painting or drawing and it need not be an original work. This brings me to Kathe Kollwitz, a German artist about whom I thought I would write here. I have a number of reproductions of her work in my home that continue to inspire and make an impression on me when I look at them. I am also fortunate enough to have visited the museum made in her honour in Berlin, the memory of which still lingers.

Kathe Kollwitz was a German painter, printmaker and sculptor who lived through two World Wars. She was born in 1867 and died at the end of the second world war in 1945. Her work was grounded in naturalism, that is to say that she drew her inspiration from real life around her. It developed a strong expressionistic style later as she sought to convey the plight of her people, especially through her prints and political posters about ordinary human struggle in wartime. This drawing below is called ‘The Child’s head on his Mother’s arms‘ – 1900.

Image taken from else-where at Flickr.com

Kollwitz began her training as a painter but moved in to printmaking – etchings, lithographs and wood cuts and finally sculpture. She made drawings throughout her life. Her early drawings have a painterly feel about them and later they become bulky and voluminous, as if sculpted. Kollwitz lost a son in the first world war and a grandson in the second and she suffered serious bouts of depression throughout her life. In spite of this, she never lost the ability to transend her own suffering and portray the simple beauty in ordinary human moments. This next drawing demonstrates this well and it is called ‘Mother and Sleeping Child‘ – c.1913.

Image taken from David Owsley Museum of Art, Ball State University

I marvel at how she has managed to evoke such tenderness and expression with these broad sweeping marks. The next piece below is a lithograph made in 1903. It is called ‘Working Woman in Profile‘.

Image taken from University of Virginia Art Museum

The head and the hands are the only parts of the body she has portrayed, as with much of her work. The rest of the form, in shadow here, is completed by the imagination as is the fire that casts it’s glow on the woman’s cheeks. I think the next piece below has a great physical presence to it. It is a crayon lithograph from 1920 called ‘Pensive Woman‘.

Image taken from a-r-t.com

Finally, here is an image of perhaps the best known sculpture by Kollwitz called ‘Mother with her dead Son‘. This piece is in fact a copy of Kollwitz’s original and it was placed is located in the New Guard house in Berlin as a memorial to all victims of war and violence. The power of the piece is intensified by the starkness of the interior of the room and its single circular roof light (not shown).

Photo taken by D. Holmes Chamberlin Jr. architect

This piece is deeply moving and an apt memorial. As with her drawings and prints, the expression comes from the head and limbs – hands, legs and feet – that emerge from the bulk and folds of carved fabric. I cannot fail to be impressed by the versatility of this great artist and her ability to convey her art with equal force and eloquence through such a variety of media. However, it is the great beauty and humanity present in all of her work that continues to inspire and affect me most.

Tales from the West – Exhibition

by Deborah Watkins. Posted on May 12, 2012

12 May

This week, I attended the opening of a joint exhibition of work by two artists from Connemara. The title of the show is ‘Tales from the West‘ and it takes place in the

Peppercanister Gallery in Herbert Street in Dublin.

The first artist is my husband Gavin Lavelle and so I have watched the progress of his work for this show at first hand. Gavin studied fine art painting at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin from 1986 – 1991. He paints full – time as well as running his own gallery (The Lavelle Art Gallery) in the old family home here in Clifden.
His work is a mixture of collage and paint, sometimes applied on flat surfaces but also on wooden discs, icon shaped panels of board and specially formed domes of wood. The cut outs come from a multitude of sources – maps, printed work, texts, architecture, art history and religious imagery. These blend with paint and ink to form strange worlds of the imagination where opposing themes, histories and influences merge.
Here’s an example below simply called ‘Large Triptych Box’.

Rosie McGurran is also living and working in Connemara in the village of Roundstone. Rosie grew up in Belfast and studied fine art at the University of Ulster. She is a member of the Royal Ulster Academy of the Arts and she has worked in residencies in Rome, Australia, Iceland and New York. She discovered Roundstone and the island of Inishlacken in the late 1990’s and this ultimately led her to move here permanently, establishing Connemara as her home and also as the inspiration for her work. Rosie’s paintings describe the landscape, buildings, winding stone walls and field formations that make Connemara unique. A female figure commands the presence of some of these – she gazes outwards with a thoughtful, questioning look and she seems to gather houses and ruins in her skirts or on her head. These paintings are a response to the communities who live here and to those who are long gone. Rosie has a special affinity with the abandoned island of Inishlacken just off the shore of Roundstone. This was once a lively community which thrived from its own natural resource – the sea – but now it is a shadow of that time, it’s people dispersed, it’s houses abandoned except for a few Summer homes.
This painting of Rosie’s below is of Inishlacken.

The opening night was very enjoyable and there was a lively and welcoming atmosphere thanks to gallery owner Bryan Murphy and a thoughtful and eloquent introduction provided by Mr. Frank X Buckley. The show runs until June 2nd 2012. Go see it if you can.