Personal Blogs

I was trying to get my painting muscles going again as I haven't painted anything in months and tried my hand at this still life. It looks much larger in the photo but it is only A4. I also wanted to share another passage from Mervyn Levy's book, which I felt was pertinent - 

Humanity is notoriously indolent and to effect change, inevitably requires effort, such effort as only the relatively few enlightened ones are prepared to make: at least initially. Enlightenment in itself is not the prerogative of the few: it is the lodestar which all may follow who are prepared to practise the arts of criticism and analysis. Every convention should be periodically subjected to the most searching scrutiny and when it is found wanting, it should be jettisoned. Yet...few people are willing to effect change, or even to question the nature or the validity of the existing status quo. Until the reader has purged his mind of existing  prejudices and preconceptions, until he has liberated his intellect from the chains of those constricting thought patterns that precondition and so limit...the possibilities of (in this case) painting. 

At present, how many of us enter adulthood equipped to think, to feel, or even to see creatively. We live by proxy, taking on trust conception and ideologies, systems of thought and of action, in whatever the field, that are founded, not upon our own unique experiences but upon those that come to us at least second-hand. 

You see, this is what happens when you don't get your art class, you have to get out and create something and when you have a political conscience as demanding as mine, then what else is a girl to do?? This is across from the local Sinn Fascist office who along with the SDLP took to the local paper to condemn 'vigilante conspiracy theorists' as you can see from the article below. Well, it might not be Banksy but it makes a point.

A few of the highlights from the article read: 'Vigilante conspiracy theorists need to catch themselves on after anti-face mask graffiti was daubed on at least two locations in Strabane this week.  The graffiti which appeared at the Bridgend and also on the river wall has also been described as 'mindless vandalism'.

One of the slogans reads, 'No new normal. #nomask tyranny #KBF. It is understood that the term KBF or 'Keep Britain Free' has been used by people protesting against Covid 19 restrictions.

SDLP councillor Steven Edwards condemned the graffiti. 'Not only does this graffiti vandalise public property but it also spreads 'fake news' around the wearing of masks...the vigilante conspiracy theorists need to catch themselves on and realise the damage they are causing to Strabane town.

Party colleague Daniel McCrossan added, 'Whoever did this - wise up. Protest if you like but don't blight our town. Strabane Sinn Fein also condemned the graffiti ' We have asked the council to remove this eyesore from outside our office. We are deeply disappointed that whoever decided to do this in the dark of the night also vandalised our poster thanking NHS and key workers.'

Daniel McCrossan also mentioned their 'moral duty' to protect others. The bottom picture in case you can't see it clearly, says 1939 with a yellow star painted next to it and 2020 with a mask. This was painted on the back of one of those propaganda covid 19 boards telling us to stay apart, wash your hands blah, blah, blah, and I painted a nice big swastika on the front of it so they couldn't put it up again. I was going to to the same to the Sinn Fein board they had put up about clapping for the NHS but my paint ran out and as a key worker myself I find it patronising and puerile as do many of my colleagues.

I had a lovely weekend away in England, I went over to visit my sister and we managed to squeeze in a trip to London on Saturday.  There were a couple of exhibitions on in the Tate Modern that I wanted to see, Pierre Bonnard's, The Colour of Memory and Magic Realism, Art in Weimar Germany 1919 - 1933.  We didn't manage to get into the Pierre Bonnard exhibition as we had walked up the 3rd floor, only to be told, we had to go back down to the entrance and buy a ticket and the gallery itself was very busy, so we just did the Magic Realism instead and had a look around some of the other exhibits.  It was ok, but like a lot of art movements, they haven't travelled very well.  They are of a place and time in art and some of them were quite cartoonish and overall, I only liked one or two of the pieces.  

Picasso's Weeping Women was also on display in the gallery.  It is quite a gaudy painting but what made it worse was the ugly frame which did it no favours at all.  I found this with a lot of the paintings in the National Gallery in Ireland too, so many were let down by clunky, overly ornate frames which detracted from the art.  i prefer my art, for the most part, in plain white frames.  In relation to the rest of the 'art' we looked at, I have to say there is a lot of brock masquerading as art.  As my sister remarked, a lot of it looked like A-level art projects and left her cold.  I had to agree, Modern Art is very subjective and to be honest a lot of it really doesn't appeal to me, I'm conservative in my tastes and while I recognise that sometimes art can express the social and political, it has to be done well in order not to appear pretentious or ridiculous. 

So, we headed for the National Portrait Gallery which has an exhibit on at the moment; Elizabethan Treasures, Miniatures by Hilliard and Oliver.  I loved this one; the detail was fantastic and took real skill and a very steady hand.  I would definitely recommend you go see them, if you can, the exhibition is on until the 19th May.  We also had a look around the portraits: there was our own Seamus Heaney and a large one of Judy Dench.  We weren't very impressed by the Judy Dench portrait, she looked like a doctor and all the character was missing from her face.  I did love the portraits of Ken Dodd and Stanley Spencer.  Unfortunately, we didn't have time to take in as much as we wanted but I have to go back over in the summer for the Van Gogh in Britain exhibition so we hope to get back to the NPG as well.  

I managed to rattle through Mark Blake's, Is This the Real Life, a biography of Queen while travelling.  I thoroughly enjoyed this as it details the fact from the fiction of biopic, Bohemian Rhapsody.  Highly recommended!

For Paddy's Day, the cousins and their children came around and we had some great food and a few drinks and a good time was had by all!  All in all, a wonderful weekend and made even better in that I'm not back to work until Friday!  Yayyy!  

I recently submitted a painting to a local art exhibition.  I usually work with a lot of colour but for a change, I tried something more stripped back.  The painting is called 'After the Fall', and is of a tree silhouetted against a pale background. (If I ever get a smart phone, I'll post a picture of it)  Someone in my art class suggested adding some fallen leaves but I decided not to, as I wanted the focus to be on the tree alone.

The painting works on 2 levels.  It can be taken literally; a tree after the leaves have fallen off in autumn, but when I painted it, I was thinking about the Genesis story of the 'tree of the knowledge of good and evil' that stood in the Garden of Eden.  So, my painting is a representation of this. 

The Genesis story has been taken as a literal truth by the Christian church and used for centuries to malign women and justify our treatment as second class humans.  In case anyone doesn't know, it was us temptresses and evil-doers who got the poor men kicked out of paradise because poor dumb Adam couldn't say no (of course) when Eve tempted him with the fruit.  An insult to both men and women.

However, this interpretation has always bothered me, not least for the reasons already stated but when you look at it from a metaphorical point of view, you come to see that this story is about consciousness and that 'religion' has misinterpreted it.

When Adam and Eve eat the 'fruit', they become conscious of themselves and the world, as they now possess the knowledge of good and evil too.  They no longer need anyone to tell them how to act or think; with consciousness, they can now think and decide for themselves how they are going to act.  They have grown up and are no longer children who have to be told what to do.  They have become adults.

This story is telling us about our evolution as human beings and how we grow up (in theory) and learn to think and act for ourselves by using our knowledge, our conscience and applying it to our actions and beliefs.   Once we have become conscious, we cannot 'unsee' reality and go back to the pre-conscious state represented by Eden which is why we are barred from ‘paradise’ forever. 

So, how do we become conscious? 

In order to grow up or become conscious, we have to challenge the things we believe in or believe about ourselves.  For example, do you believe in God and why, or why not? 

So, the tree in my painting is a representation of this.  It is asking the question, who am I when stripped of the delusions of ego, religion, nationality, culture and materialism. Do my actions match the beliefs I have about myself as a human being or am I deluding or lying to myself.

When I was young, I used to get the Once Upon a Time comic and, as the name suggests, it was full of fairy tales and stories about the usual subjects, princesses being saved by princes, tales from the Arabian Nights and as far as memory serves, it was also where I first encountered tales of Brer Rabbit.  It was the highlight of my week and I loved it as much for some of the colourful artwork as the stories.  I was always drawing and colouring-in as a child and I even had a painting exhibited locally when I was in P2.  There was an exhibition of local art and somehow I was nominated to paint a picture for my class/school, I'm not entirely sure which.  Anyway, I got the afternoon off lessons to paint a picture of a hen.  I don't remember if I made that choice or if that is what I was told to draw. 

A few years ago, I took up art again and, I have to say, I love it more now than ever and I try and get to exhibitions and galleries as much as I possibly can.  I even sold a painting when I first showed some of them at a craft fair.  This actually happened by accident as we thought the paintings were being used to decorate the room but they were put on a stall instead.  

I was in Dublin on Saturday to meet a friend so I headed down early so I could spend some time in the National Gallery and came home with a pair of 'Starry Night' socks!   There was a Vermeer exhibition on but it was booked out so I couldn't get to see it but I still enjoyed a roam around the gallery.  Then last night, I spent an hour on Facebook watching video presentations on Van Gogh's Sunflowers, from art galleries around the world.   Van Gogh would probably be my favourite artist and I do like his work in general but Starry Night would be my favourite painting, hence the socks.

A friend of mine recently shared a video of Jim Carrey, the actor, talking about art and discussing how creating art had helped to heal him after a particularly heart-breaking time.  Jim isn't the first to find healing in art and creativity and I have to say, I too, find it very therapeutic. 

In the video, Jim talks about how he was sitting in a 'grey New York' and felt the need to bring some colour in to his life.  A sentiment I understand, more so considering the state of the world at the moment.  While I am political in my outlook, when it comes to art, I leave the politics aside and take the aesthetic road.  I don't want to create political statements with my artwork, I want to create something of beauty to transcend those miserable and grey days of life.  On this one, I'll leave the politics to Banksy.