ARCADIAN VIEWS II
“Does not the pleasantness of this place carry in itself sufficient reward for any time lost in it ” [1]
I am intrigued by the way some places can hold a memory of past events, how they resonate with us emotionally, visually and most importantly imaginatively. Both my everyday experiences and my travels in Ireland and abroad inform the imagery depicted in these works. Whether it is my experience of investigating holy wells throughout Ireland or visiting magical places such as the Ninfa and la Mortella gardens in Italy, the ancient sites of classical Greece or the cultural shifts of life in Turkey, Morocco or India. The eclectic mix of experiences and influences combine with my ongoing fascination with colour, pattern and surface to produce the paintings in this exhibition.
In the early 2000’s I completed a Fine Art Masters by Research on the subject of holy wells. This allowed me to travel Ireland visiting many of these sites, located throughout the country and often dating back to pre-Christian times I found them sometimes neglected or almost hidden by overgrowth but typically nestled into the landscape and maintaining a deep connection to the mythologies or narratives of the past. These are the kind of places that both connect us to our past and feed our spiritual and imaginative sensibilities, for me they present a direct connection between landscape and belief, whether that belief is religious, spiritual or mythological.
Holy wells are just one example of the kind of place that inspires me, others include follies, grottos and shell houses; elaborate structures made primarily for decoration but projecting through their visual reference, placement or scale a greater significance or importance that they actually possess. Many of my paintings depict or suggest folly like structures, similar to the physical structures in the landscape they exist as exotic and sometimes bizarre ‘props’, full of aspiration and hinting at grandeur, drawing the eye and operating as points of departure for our imagination.
The notion of ‘delight’ is certainly relevant, my work does not deal with or depict the mundane or banal, it is unapologetically a celebration; of colour, of surface, of shape and texture - of life. The series of paintings in Arcadian Views II utilize painting techniques and approaches that required a huge amount of research and experimentation over quite a few years. Processes such as encaustic with its use of oil, wax, pigment and dammar varnish are time consuming, temperamental and difficult materials to control. They do however provide the richness and depth of colour and quality of surface that I require.
The elements of time and transformation are important to me, they frame and direct how I develop ideas and imagery in the work as well as being intrinsic to my way of making. Slow layering, building and erasing, balancing control and accident are essential elements of my working process. It is a process that requires control and order while accepting and welcoming accident and the unexpected.
The ‘places’ depicted in this exhibition present an imagined ideal, it may be a romantic and whimsical ideal but it is above all a celebration and a positive environment within which to reflect on, and contemplate possibility.
[1] Lope de Vega, Arcadia: Prose and Verse. (1598)
“Does not the pleasantness of this place carry in itself sufficient reward for any time lost in it ” [1]
I am intrigued by the way some places can hold a memory of past events, how they resonate with us emotionally, visually and most importantly imaginatively. Both my everyday experiences and my travels in Ireland and abroad inform the imagery depicted in these works. Whether it is my experience of investigating holy wells throughout Ireland or visiting magical places such as the Ninfa and la Mortella gardens in Italy, the ancient sites of classical Greece or the cultural shifts of life in Turkey, Morocco or India. The eclectic mix of experiences and influences combine with my ongoing fascination with colour, pattern and surface to produce the paintings in this exhibition.
In the early 2000’s I completed a Fine Art Masters by Research on the subject of holy wells. This allowed me to travel Ireland visiting many of these sites, located throughout the country and often dating back to pre-Christian times I found them sometimes neglected or almost hidden by overgrowth but typically nestled into the landscape and maintaining a deep connection to the mythologies or narratives of the past. These are the kind of places that both connect us to our past and feed our spiritual and imaginative sensibilities, for me they present a direct connection between landscape and belief, whether that belief is religious, spiritual or mythological.
Holy wells are just one example of the kind of place that inspires me, others include follies, grottos and shell houses; elaborate structures made primarily for decoration but projecting through their visual reference, placement or scale a greater significance or importance that they actually possess. Many of my paintings depict or suggest folly like structures, similar to the physical structures in the landscape they exist as exotic and sometimes bizarre ‘props’, full of aspiration and hinting at grandeur, drawing the eye and operating as points of departure for our imagination.
The notion of ‘delight’ is certainly relevant, my work does not deal with or depict the mundane or banal, it is unapologetically a celebration; of colour, of surface, of shape and texture - of life. The series of paintings in Arcadian Views II utilize painting techniques and approaches that required a huge amount of research and experimentation over quite a few years. Processes such as encaustic with its use of oil, wax, pigment and dammar varnish are time consuming, temperamental and difficult materials to control. They do however provide the richness and depth of colour and quality of surface that I require.
The elements of time and transformation are important to me, they frame and direct how I develop ideas and imagery in the work as well as being intrinsic to my way of making. Slow layering, building and erasing, balancing control and accident are essential elements of my working process. It is a process that requires control and order while accepting and welcoming accident and the unexpected.
The ‘places’ depicted in this exhibition present an imagined ideal, it may be a romantic and whimsical ideal but it is above all a celebration and a positive environment within which to reflect on, and contemplate possibility.
[1] Lope de Vega, Arcadia: Prose and Verse. (1598)