Monday 30th March 2020   Finding the Keys!

So the days of restricted movement  and isolation melt into one another like waves on the shore. For some maybe not so gently, for more, the tsunami has engulfed their health, dreams and finances. Never in our lives have we been so challenged to look inside and see what lies within. 

   Personally and like other people, I love the times of meeting friends and family, the moments spent connecting eye to eye, the hugs, the fleeting physical touch that says ‘I love you, I care, I’ve got your back!’ I’m no different to anyone else. I’m missing my friends even though I get to spend ’quality’ time on the phone, texting or e-mailing. It’s not quite the same though is it?

   So my challenge is to look deeper inside and rummage in the stores of experiences and materials I’ve accumulated over the years and  oh boy, have I gathered and collected; photos, drawings, words making up half formed sentences and work materials. Drawers full of unfinished ideas and impulses. gaping mounts waiting for guest images and frames lying idle against walls. Sometimes, looking at all the ‘stuff’ I have in my studio and in almost every other room in the house overwhelms me and I don’t know where to focus. That has been the story of this week alone. 

   Ok…it’s Spring and the month of March when all of Nature comes alive and so do I. I lean a little more towards hibernation in the past few years and this Winter was no exception. I dreamed a lot of what I might do, what might ‘draw’ me in its direction come the Equinox and the greening of the landscape around me. So the Equinox was last weekend  and this weekend we changed to Summer time and I was drawn as if by a magnetic force into the sanctum sanctorum of the studio. It feels like a sacred space most of the time because that’s where the ideas are ‘given’ to me. That’s where the ideas work themselves out into drawings and paintings, each subject choosing its own medium and each medium dictating my crafting in its own particular technique and style. Therefore every experience of a subject or a composition is unique and different.

The romantic side of me looks for the familiar, the comforting motif that unlocks what can become a dam burst of mark making.  The familiar is as ever in the flowers that are happening in our hedgerows and gardens. Primroses pose, smiling their way through wind and cold. I know their personalities and their structure from a very early age. I was fortunate to have had a father who was invested in the ‘little things’ and who could become excited by the appearance of  a single flower. He was at one with the rhythm of the days and the turning of the seasons. The River Shannon and Plassey were my classroom

In this current  ‘lockdown’ of our nation and the confinement of our movements in the interest of curbing the spread of a virus, our world has shrunk. Our terms of reference have narrowed and there is a tendency to regard ourselves as prisoners of  circumstances beyond our control. I can only speak from my own experience and that experience is now contained within my four walls, my garden and a studio that is begging to have colour and composition energising it again.  As my outer world contracts, my inner world expands.

The keys to my escape from any sense of confinement are in the doing, in the making and in the responding to the immediate world around me through the medium of drawing and paint.

Yes, the primroses are out. The paper is ready. The colours are lined up waiting to go onto the palate and the brushes are poised ready for action. I’m ready to unlock what lives inside of me in response to the beauty out there. As yet I haven’t mastered how to make a video but I can do a painting in stages and publish the stills.

Reference music which has inspired me for  for this subject:  ‘For the Beauty of the Earth’ by John Rutter

How it all happens!

I make a very simple outline pencil drawing of a small bunch of primrose flowers and leaves with a few buds about to open and one or two half opened blooms. What I love about these flowers is the curvy nature of both flower and stem. The flowers are so feminine and gentle and hint of a nature that is slightly reticent but tenacious given the climatic conditions of when they grow and where they bloom. On top of banks, under hedges, in forgotten ditches they sing Spring in pale yellow profusion. The primrose is  a five petalled flower with elements of heart shaped petals and an inner star near the centre. The leaves remind me of curly cabbage leaves with bumps and irregular veins that come from the central spine.