Killary

I took some photos along the roadside near Killary with a view to using them for some new paintings. I took these because certain elements attracted me – colours, the shape of the mountains in silhouette and the shape of the cut bog. I like this one below because of the warmth of the orange grasses against the blue sky – feels more like Australia than Connemara.

 

Hill near Killary

 

 

 

 

The light is still very low and it illuminates each blade of grass much like theatre lights. There is great drama too in the starkness of the mountains – they loom in the distance, great shadowy figures waiting in the wings.

This is a protected area so there are few signs of human interference save the ubiquitous telegraph poles and the road itself. You feel like you are standing in a bowl or an amphitheatre with mountains on almost all sides. I love the blue pool in this one below – it reflects the colour of the sky.

 

Killary

 

 

 

I have started a series of new landscapes based on these images which I will post about soon.

January Bog

I drove to Galway yesterday and stopped on the way to take some photos just outside Oughterard. It’s a favourite spot of mine – I took some photographs there last Summer. It’s a different place in January but no less beautiful and in fact there’s still a real richness to the colours of the bog and grasses, lovely russety browns and mahogany shades..

 

Oughterard Bog, second photo

 

 

 

 

There was very little colour in the sky and this is reflected in the pools of water which have a metallic quality, like liquid silver or mercury. A lovely contrast against the earthy mix of colours around it.

 

ough 5

 

 

 

 

Oughterard Bog - photo by Deborah Watkins

 

 

 

 

There’s a quietness about the place, a stillness, as if the earth still rests. I imagine tiny tendrils underneath, waiting to move upwards and change this place again with a wash of green. Soon..

 

Oughterard Bog from the N59

January Landscape

I started another landscape based on some photos of the bog I took in the rain this month. I began the piece on the easel and used charcoal and broad brushes with lots of colour – below.

 

Landscape first stage

 

 

 

 

The horizontal swipe of orange made me think of Egon Shiele‘s work – something about the combination of black and rust. I had to stop and take a look at his paintings – this one’s called ‘Truth Unveiled

I love the energy in the lines, the scratchiness of them, you can almost feel the hand that made these marks – the daubs and blocks of vivid colour. Wonderful.

 

Egon Schiele - Truth Unveiled

 Image taken from canvasreplicsa.com

 

 

 

Now back to work! I added more colour and detail to the landscape below, it’s still on the easel so the inks and paint run downwards a bit.

 

The same landscape with more paint added

 

 

 

 

I take it off the easel now and do some work on the table, trying to counteract the vertical lines with more horizontal shapes of colour.

 

Same landscape worked a bit more

 

 

 

 

I want to darken it a little now so I use some charcoal where the paint is dry, on the hills at the back especially and in the line through the middle of the road.

 

Next stage of landscape painting

 

 

 

 

I mark in the fence on the left also with charcoal.

 

Landscape after more work

 

 

 

 

I reworked much of the piece ( below) once the paint was dry. The fence is gone and I’ve decided to leave it out. I tried consciously to avoid being precious about what I’d already done, pushing myself to just go ahead and make mistakes – keeping the image of the place in my mind at all times.

I think this is where my greatest weakness is and I’m trying to gain the confidence to finish a painting with the same energy that it had when it began. I’m happier with the results so far and I need to put this painting away now for a few days and come back to it afresh.

 

Finished Landscape

 

Winter Waits

Cashel by Marianne Chayet

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.

 

 

Brown Bog at Roundstone

 

 

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.

 

Photo taken at Roundstone Bog

 

 

 

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 )

Land Interrupted

I got back to some painting with the photographs I took of the bog in mind (see Shifting Seasons ). I have been thinking about this notion of the cut bog as a wound. It brought to mind a passage in ‘Tinkers‘ ( a book I have already mentioned a few times! )

In this excerpt, Howard is reflecting on a woman he sees in his mind’s eye, planting flowers. He is thinking about the effect that man has on the landscape. He imagines how a consciousness of this demands some small gesture as a ‘token of redress

 

..the flowers were an act of resistance against the raw earth like an act of sheer, inevitable, necessary madness because human beings have to live somewhere and in something and here is just as outrageous as there because in either place ( in any place ) it seems like an interruption, an intrusion on something that, no matter how many times she read in her Bible, Let them have dominion, seemed marred, dispelled, vanquished once people arrived with their catastrophic voices and saws and plows and began to sing and hammer and carve and erect.

 

taken from Tinkers by Paul Harding, Chapter 1, page 61

 

I love the hyperbole in this piece and the fundamental truth of it. It made me think of the cut bog as an interruption in something that is much older than ourselves or our forefathers or anything we can possibly imagine. I don’t intend to make any kind of judgement about the use of the bog, it is just one way of seeing it, as an ancient observer might, like a star gazing down on all of time. I think perhaps it is this interruption or contrast that draws me to the bog lands. The swaying grasses and heathers are like hairs and goose bumps on skin, a living breathing thing which when damaged, reveals a beautiful shock of glistening tissue and muscle underneath.

This is how my painting of the bog began (below).

 

First stage of Bog Painting by Deborah Watkins

 

 

 

 

Next, I added some broad strokes of orange so that this colour will come through anything I put on top and hopefully make the surface glow.

 

Second stage of Bog Painting by Deborah Watkins

 

 

 

 

I subsequently added more paint and ink ( using different types of brushes ) to describe the heathers and grasses – greens, reds, pinks and gold. Then I used a dark brown ink to suggest the disturbed surface where the bog has been cut and driven through (below).

 

Third stage of Bog Painting by Deborah Watkins

 

 

 

It’s not finished yet but I decided to stop here before the colours became muddy. I will go back to it once this layer of paint has dried completely.

Have you read anything recently that has influenced the way that you see things?