Redefining my work, and finding old inspirations
It was a dark and stormy night...
Hello everyone!
As I write this, the wind is howling outside but the sky, grey and overcast, is threatening rain. Living in Ireland means rain is always a possibility. This is something I enjoy. I have always loved the rain. It is especially nice on those days I am sequestered away in my studio room, huddled into my drawing nook, as my partner calls it anyway. There is a skylight right above my desk, and the feeling of painting here while the rain pummels the glass is nothing short of lovely.
When the weather is cold and angry, one of my favourite things to do is go out with my partner to the local cafes and get coffee. We’ve been wanting to get out and sketch in cafes again, a habit mercilessly murdered by covid, and something I am still too nervous to do. We usually get take aways because of that, in our little metal mugs. Today though, we were the only people there, and so we took refuge in the spot by the window, and had our sit in drinks. I ordered my first ever chai latte, with cinnamon on top, and felt very cosy. Unfortunately since we had thought we were getting take out drinks, neither of us brought our sketchbooks - an amateur mistake if I do say so!
I have been thinking about the work I want to make. My relationship with art has changed, and I find myself less excited about human subjects and more excited about the sense of a place. I have always been drawn to the natural world, to the beauty of it, and the indifference of it. There are things to see in every nook of a forest, tiny homes nestled away in the hollows of trees, between the tangle of branches, under the rocks that jut from the ground. These things, quiet and humble, have become more of what I am interested in showing. I think perhaps I always have been, but I lacked the confidence to do so, believing that paintings would only resonate if they had human to human contact.
It’s strange how that belief manifests in my own work, because I love so many artists whose work barely shows a flicker of a person, and I wonder if it’s something that I’ve internalised from an outside source, like how when I use my oil paints, I suddenly feel like I must paint only realism in order for it to be “real” art, and somehow worthwhile. As if my own voice is not good enough for the medium.
I’ve recently become aware of an artist by the name of Marina Marcolin, whose work is both liminal and solid. I feel like if I was to try and touch it, my hands would pass through their work, like mist. I love how Marcolin applies their paint. It seems so delicate and precise, which gives me the impression that Marcolin knows exactly where each stroke is going before it is laid down. I admire those confident strokes, and the way each piece of art gives the feeling of exactly the place that it is, like something visceral, deep in the chest, a knowing of the atmosphere of that area.
I have also been thinking about a workshop I did back in my first year of university with artist Leah Fusco. The workshop was called Sense of Place, and it was one of the few workshops we did that really resonated with me as a maker. I’m very stubborn you see, and can often get stuck in my own ways much to my own detriment. It’s only in hindsight I wonder if I didn’t give some of those workshops the chance they deserved, but I’m getting away from my point.
The workshop with Leah Fusco was centred on creating the sense of a place, which as mentioned, is something I have found myself returning to, so I returned to Leah’s work too. I remember the first time I saw it, the urgency in the pencil marks, the fact that so much was captured outdoors, onsight. It was really incredible, and connected with something in me that wanted to do the same. I was especially taken with her moody shipwrecks and built up spaces that brought the tension of nature and human made buildings into stark focus. Finding her work again brought me to the wonderful Frontiers project by Rachel Gannon, which explores the tension of modern frontier areas, such as Britain’s South East coast docklands - the focus of the project. Again, what drew me to it, was the evocative and moody atmosphere, creating a certain tension and liminality from a space which is often so politicised, but equally somewhere no one really belongs.
Stylistically, Gannon’s work is quite different from my own, but this does not make it any less worth looking at, which is unfortunately a sentiment I have occasionally seen in the wild. If anything, I love looking at how people outside my scope of influences see the world, and what I can learn from that. As Austin Kleon says, “Steal like an artist.” Honestly that book probably changed my entire viewpoint back when I read it the first time.
The rain has started outside, it now batters the windows of our flat, and with the wind howling in tandem I am reminded of how lucky we are to be harboured from the weather.
Even as I am readying myself to explore this old and new venture, I don’t think I will ever stop painting people. I simply enjoy it too much to give it up. Saying that though, I do want to lean into this need to represent the land in some way. Not as realism, but as metaphor, as narrative. A way to highlight those little worlds that surround us, but also as a way to show our impact on them. Our seas of rubbish, our pollutants, our problems. And, ultimately, our burden to solve.
Back in uni, again in that notorious second year, we had a project to put on that ended in a show. The theme was “Blue,” so ultimately, I ended up looking at climate, pollution, and our ocean habitats. It was an intense project, one that upset me as I scrolled past pictures and pictures of dead animals, hermit crabs using coke bottle caps as shells, seabirds with bellies full of plastic - and yet, something strange happened. I felt fulfilled in this work, as if my reinterpreting it into art was helping to draw attention to it in some small way. Please bare in mind I have always been an activist, participating in demonstrations and marches for pretty much my whole life.
I believe art has always had the capacity to draw our attention to things, which is part of what makes it dangerous. Art as propaganda is something long studied and utilised throughout history, and now, I feel a need to document every dead creature I find washed up on the beach or around me because they demand respect, to be noticed, to be seen as more than something disposable or lesser than.
This draw towards showing these things again speaks to my urge to recapture the natural world in my work more directly, or rather, more deliberately. It’s something that is at the core of me, part of the strict unyielding value and debt I have to the world around us. To step gently and live as compassionately as we can. To show the beauty in the mundane.
I am excited about this journey, and I sincerely hope you all enjoy coming along on it with me as I work towards making it a reality.