Show in Wesport, Co. Mayo

I haven’t posted in a long while, mostly because with lockdowns there hadn’t been much happening and now I a week late with this one, but I have a solo show at Custom House Studios in Westport that opened to the public on June 3rd. That runs until June 27th and is titled From Under the Hill, there was no open event due to the restrictions so the gallery installed the work and opened it’s doors. I was delighted to hear back from Custom House Studios, it’s a place I love showing and it was nice to kick things off fairly quickly after the easing of lockdown.

During the lockdown I started The Bit of Gallery Podcast, on the show I chatted with artists either with rural backgrounds or artists who are based in rural Ireland, it ran for 12 episodes and came to a bit of a halt because with the lockdown lifting there were a few things coming up that meant I just hadn’t time to juggle them all, including the show in Westport, Crinniú na nÓg, going back to my part time job and also getting accepted onto the Azure Dementia Inclusive Training. I’m hoping to get it back up and going in the next few weeks.

Work in Progress - August 2020 & Birr Arts Festival

First post in a while, I got a good bit of painting done over the few months of lockdown, I managed to get two of them finished before I give them a glaze or two and I’m hoping to get some still life paintings of the props done over the next few weeks. I’m still looking into introducing new characters and I’m thinking of using a really local myth about werewolves, in the western half of Laois and Kilkenny county, which used to make up the old kingdom of Ossory there are several myths about werewolves so I’m thinking of going along the same lines as the sluagh and making some sort of mask that would be fairly solid and easy to manage.

I’d also like to do something with the Stray Sod creature. I think it features a fair bit in fantasy but it has origins in Celtic mythology, so I’ll be starting to work on a costume for that at some point soon too.

In July we ran 4 weeks of workshops to conclude what people had paid for prior to lockdown, they finished last week or the week before. A few things have been rescheduled, confirmed and proposed.

First up this week, I’m delighted to have 2 paintings showing in Birr Arts Festival which will be hosted virtually here. The festival launches on Friday 14th of August at 6:30, all information can be found over at the link on the Birr Vintage Week Facebook page

One of the Horde, Oil on Canvas, 2020. One of the 2 paintings being exhibited virtually in Birr this week.

Next up then is 2 exhibitions in October, both curated by friend and artist Sinéad Keogh, Soul Noir is returning for it’s fourth year and will be in Dublin and the second show is a solo exhibition in Tallaght Library that Sinéad is organising and curating, I’ll post dates and details closer to the time. She has a place secured in Clondalkin Library too, I’m not sure of the dates yet for that one but I’ll be giving talks at both.

Westport has been rescheduled too for the end of February, so all going well it’s down to launch on February 25th at Custom House Studios. There’s a couple more things lined up but I’ll post about them later as they approach.

Work in Progress - March 2020 and A Few Things Called Off

There’s a few bits and pieces postponed due to the Covid - 19 pandemic. Firstly the show in Westport has been put back, I’m not sure until when but I don’t mind because it’ll give me a chance to get a bit more done for it and have larger selection to pick from. I’m still painting away towards that, not at the same pace the last couple of weeks but chipping away at it. I’m running out of canvas but I have a good lot of linen there and I never painted on linen so I’m looking forward to see how the work turns out on it.

Current sketch I’m working on for a painting, hoping to get started in oils of the weekend

With Heritage House closed we’ve had to cancel the workshops, senior citizens, teenager’s and children’s workshops are all off until further notice along with the Cork & Canvas sessions that we were running on Thursday nights. As far as working from home goes I’m just cutting out the stencils for the metal boxes that the board asked me to do a while ago. They wanted animals and plants on them so when I know what they want that’s half the battle. I’m just editing the images in Photoshop, printing them off and cutting out the stencil for spray painting, so whenever we get back to Heritage House I’ll be going at them.

The image I’m working with for the fox stencil

Work in Progress November, December 2019 & January 2020

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.

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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.

Work in Progress - October 2019

I decided this weekend that I’m going to take a break from the piece I’ve been working on for several reasons. The first is just the amount of time it has taken to get to it’s current state, including research, reading and source photography, I’ve been working on this project since March and I’m getting a bit burned out looking at the same piece every time I go to the easel. The other reason is that the shows that it was due to go into seem to be a little up in the air, the last I heard about it was back in July and it as originally meant to be in September, I’ll post more about those exhibitions further down the line. I’m going to work away at it bit by bit over the next year while painting other works and it already has a new home once it’s finished. I got a little bit more done to the painting after I took the picture below but that’s about where it is.

This month I started getting photos for new paintings, there was 3 that I couldn’t choose between for one piece so they’ll be the images for a triptych, I’ve never painted a triptych before so I’ll see how that goes. This new body of work will start getting sketched out this week and they’ll be a larger scale than what I’ve been working on previously.

Last week, I had 3 small paintings in The Souls Noir Festival of the Dark Arts, which was curated by Sinéad Keogh and was held in Laragh House in Maynooth, Co. Kildare and starting this week I’ll be facilitating the workshops in The Dunamaise Arts Centre for the month of November.

Work in Progress - August & September 2019

I didn’t post any work in progress update in August because I’m still working away at the oil painting below and I just forgot. It was about 2 weeks into September when I remembered so I decided to post to month in one. I’ve moved off of the tree, having finished the leaves and started working on the Púca, which needed a couple of glazes to to correct tones. The hat was too light in colour and the jumper was too cool tonally, so I have them sorted now and I’m working on the tracksuit, which I’m hoping to get finished next weekend or at worst the weekend after.

I think what took so long to get the crown of the tree completed was that the leaves were so numerous that it allowed me to be a bit looser but due to how big the tree is, it meant that the leaves needed some bit of form and definition so it was a case of deciding when they had enough work gone into them without leaving them looking unfinished and monotone.

I’m hoping to start work on sketches for the next batch of paintings from tomorrow evening. I’m going to keep going as I am, allowing the canvas to serve as the background, I think it lets the viewers eye fill in the rest of the painting without painting in a room or a landscape or where ever the characters are situated and I like the look of the detailed figure on the bare background.

I’ve confirmed another set of oil painting workshops in the Dunamaise Arts Centre too and they’ll be running for the month of November, I think every Tuesday evening, the same as before and we’re going to be running Halloween camps in Heritage House in Abbeyleix.

In work, one of the members of the board asked me if I would paint some of the telecom boxes on the street in Abbeyleix, like Dublin Canvas do. They want it linked to bio diversity, so lots of animals and plants. I’ve been messing about with a few bits but I’ve changed what I was originally going to do because I accidentally made something that sort of resembled The Animals of Farthing Wood logo. I’m also going to use spray paint and stencils because it’ll save me having to seal it when it’s finished and also I don’t want to be getting caught up in tiny details that won’t be seen or noticed. With this I’m aiming to maybe have the stencils ready for Spring when the weather takes up a bit.

Work in Progress - July 2019

This month consisted of workshops and, at long last, some painting. The workshops were running every Tuesday for the month of July at The Dunamaise Art Centre and for 2 hours each night. Originally I was going to set up a still life to work from but it couldn’t be left set up from one week to the next so I got the group to work from photographs. Two of these images were what I made works from last year and the third was one that I never used. Everyone’s paintings turned out really well and for most it was their first time using oils so I had them working with a fairly limited palette, using 5 colours and ran over some mediums, canvas preparations and a couple of other bits . Following off the back of those workshops, I’m looking into sorting out a follow up session that will hopefully run for a little longer. I have some images of the group’s work below, I didn’t go mad snapping pictures because I didn’t want to be annoying them or stopping them working so I just got a few snaps before the start of the workshops on week two and week four. When the follow up goes ahead it will be at Heritage House in Abbeyleix

Back in the studio I finally started painting this piece that I have been doing research for and sketching since April and it got off to a rocky start. When I start a painting, I draw it out on paper, sort out anything that I want to sort, trace the drawing and then transfer it over onto canvas. This process was a necessity in this case because I want to keep the canvas clean so it was a way of keeping pencil lines where I want them. The problems started when I tried to transfer the drawing, the first time, I’m not sure why, maybe the pencil wasn’t soft enough, but it didn’t press onto the canvas. Sickened, I traced it again using a softer pencil, this time the trace moved and one section ended up where it was meant to be, then continued on an inch higher than it should have been, I was annoyed and thought will I just turn this into a glitch painting. I stretched the canvas a third time in not so great lighting, I transferred the drawing , it went on perfect and I was happy, until I turned on the light and saw that there was a wrinkle running the width of the canvas that priming didn’t get rid of, so that was ripped off the frame again. I ironed the canvas twice, I stretched it a fourth time, I traced the drawing with a 5B pencil fairly heavily, I stuck the trace with the strongest tape I had and finally got a result and now I have the painting underway and I’m about two and a half weeks into it.

I’m happy with how the painting is going, I think I’ll be working this way for the next body of work too. I struggle to finish paintings, I think maybe because when they’re done there’s a feeling of separation or something whereas with this way of working it’s open to the possibility of adding to it until it goes to exhibition at least.

Work in Progress - June 2019

I spent June finishing off the sketch to a point where I’d be happy to put it on canvas, there’s a few more bits that I want to put in but I want to start getting paint on canvas so I’ll add the extras later. I’m running a little later than I was expecting with the painting because I ran into a few problems with the painting last week and had to re-stretch the canvas twice so I’m hoping it’ll go smoothly this time, the first problem was with the preparation itself, the next time I ran into trouble transferring the drawing onto the canvas. I was back in Photoshop preparing a couple of other images to add at a later stage too.

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I ordered the frame from the Milliken Brothers in County Down, their frames are really well made and sturdy and with this being a much larger painting than what I have been working on lately and also due to the shape of the canvas I wanted to take precautions to avoid any potential warping further down the line.

I ran the workshops at Heritage House for Cruinniú na nÓg (images below) and the 4 day painting workshop too and they went well. The Cruinniú na nÓg was just a case of people participating as they called in and there was a steady crowd. The 4 day workshops were a little slow to fill up but ended up close to full in the last few days before they started. I planned out a lot more than we could’ve fitted into each day just to make sure that we weren’t going to be left with a window of having nothing to be at.

June felt fairly busy but I think I was just focusing on two or three things fairly intensely and trying to aim for a few deadline set by myself and workshop dates and then there were a few problems I had foreseen with the canvas.

First day of the 4 day workshops when the group did colour theory

Work in Progress - May 2019

I spent part of May planning workshops that will be held in Heritage House, Abbeyleix. They are mostly paint based with a bit of lino print to finish up on the last day. The workshops are planned for June 25th and will run until the 28th. All the details, such as price, numbers and a more detailed breakdown of each days classes are over on the Heritage House Facebook page and you can message us to book a place from there if you’re around Abbeyleix or know somebody that would be interested in taking part. When I finished work on Friday there were 8 places available.

The planned breakdown is:

Tuesday June 25th - Colour Theory, Wednesday - Portraiture, Thursday - Still Life and Friday - Lino Print

On the 15th of June I will be running a quilling workshop as part of Cruinniú na nÓg. This will be running from 12pm to 2pm at Heritage House and there will be loads more going on at Heritage House for Cruinniú na nÓg so again if you’re around Abbeyleix call in. The reason I decided to try a quilling workshop was because the date is so close to the painting workshop if anyone came to both I didn’t want it to be too repetitive.

In the studio I’ve just been working away at the drawing and have it fairly close to finished so I’m hoping to get it onto canvas in the next two weeks. I lost a week because I wasn’t happy with the tree over on the right so I decided to cover it over and redo it and I’m happier with the result. There are a couple of small bits to add to it still but I can start painting and add them later.

Just for a bit of a break from the drawing I was playing about with a small lino print and it’s something that I would like to do more of at some stage. The paper I was using was fairly think and I’d like to try a thinner paper and take my time doing it. Just because it was a bit of play I rushed it a bit and didn’t have the ink very even. I found the best result was on the damp paper but I had too much ink on the block and lost some detail, but I was happy enough with it.