I haven’t posted since November because with the Christmas break December was going to be a bit all over the place and with January being a bit of a slow month I decided I’d just try to sum up the 3 months in one post. After stepping back from the large painting that was in some of the previous posts, I started work on some new pieces for Westport and I have 3 finished for a bit, I have to go back with a bit of a glaze on one of them to adjust the colour one of the Sluagh masks needs an couple of highlights and the other need s a couple of glazes then they’ll be ready for the exhibition. I’m going at some new frames this weekend and a bit of drawing towards what is now going to be a diptych and another piece hopefully.
I’ve been trying to paint with a little more urgency and slightly looser than I was for the last year or so because I was getting so caught up in tiny details that some of the paintings were verging on overworked. When I was on the MFA, Kevin Atherton who was the Head of the Masters programme in NCAD said about one of the paintings in my studio that I was showing my knowledge of painting, that the viewer would be able to construct the painting from what detail I had on the canvas so I want to try and get back to that while continuing with the same style of painting. It wasn’t that I was afraid of having too little detail in the painting that it wouldn’t be clear what it was but it takes very, very little for me to start worrying that I can’t paint so I think I was trying to tell myself otherwise.
I’m also planning to go with a mixture of paintings and props for this next show in Westport. I’ve given up trying to make the antlers from scratch, they keep breaking under their own weight and I’m not scaling them down so I decided instead to use branches, as a headpiece it’s not put together yet but I think I’m going to be happier with how they looks because they’re slightly different lengths and they’re fairly crooked and gnarled. This rougher appearance makes it look like the character they’re for crawled out of the Earth. I’m going to remake the shamrock for the Leprechaun too, I think I’m going to try that Worbla material for it. I want to make some wall mounts for them this time instead of the free standing plinths that I made for Birr so I’ll have 3 of them and I think I’m going to try and hang the leprechaun hoodie with a few pins.