inspired by flowers

I always seem to be noticing flowers and admit that I find them inspiring! Wisteria hasn't yet entered my painted repertoire, but I always stop to look at it when I see it. This picture was taken a couple of months ago before the flowers were fully in bloom. I was in Dublin that morning and just had to stop and snap the trained wildness over this doorfront.

My absolute favourite example of the trained wildness that is wisteria is this magical portal here in Bray. I used to live up the street from this house so watched it bloom every year.

This is one of my favourite gardens in Bray, and right next to the wisteria gate is a gorgeous magnolia tree. As the tree is so close to the footpath it was easy for me to do sketches of the flowers in different phases of bloom when I lived so close by.

The result of my sketching that particular tree was this acrylic painting that I did in the spring of 1999 and which was included in my Blessings exhibition at Signal Arts Centre that fall. In 2000 the exhibition was again displayed at Cavan County Museum, Ballyjamesduff. It currently resides in a private collection in the US.

As well as working from sketches and photographs flowers also appear in my dreams. When I lived in rural Kerry in the mid-90s I noticed that many people had beautiful and enormous calla lilies in their spacious front gardens. In fact, I think this may have been my first experience of seeing these flowers other than in pictures and I was quite taken with them. So much so that I dreamt about them, albeit in my dream life the flowers were vibrantly coloured. I made this Father's Day collage card in 1995, and a later riffing on these images painted the curtains that became the main part of my installation Dreaming for Dad, which was created as a memorial for my father (he died in September 1995) and exhibited at The Basement Gallery, Dundalk in 1996.

When thinking of seminal images of my home and life in Kerry for my painting Knockeen, the dream calla lilies made a large appearance. This large painting from 2021 was part of my exhibition Memory Is My Homeland at Rathfarnham Castle earlier this year. 

incognito 2022

Annually, for quite awhile now, I've participated in the annual fundraiser for The Jack and Jill Children's Foundation. I first got involved with the fundraisers for this charity in 2013 with The Big Egg Hunt Dublin. I blogged about the creation of my egg here, here, here, here, here, here and here. From the number of weeks it took to do that piece, it's understandable that artists could not make an annual committment, so it is with some relief that "incognito" took over. The premise is simple: the artist turn three cards into any type of art they choose and sign only on the back of the card, the artworks are all photographed and put on display for a uniform price, buyers are not aware of who made which piece until they've bought a piece and turned it over! All funds go directly to the charity and it continues to be able to do its good work. The artists are happy to donate their time and talent, the purchasers are happy to receive a piece of art for their monetary donation, and Jack and Jill is happy at the success of these fundraisers. It is a win-win situation for all involved!

Once again this year was a huge success! All works cost the uniform price of €65 and there were over 3000 works in total. Due to covid, the sale was online both this year and last year. This year the work was sold out in one day! Now that the sale has happened, my three collage cards are winging their ways to their new owners and I can show the work that I submitted. 

Last summer I was purging some shelves, including my magazine collection. However, before I recycled, I went through each magazine to save interesting pictures (colour, texture, etc) for use in future collages. During my residency at Signal Arts Centre last fall I made a number of collage cards for future use and created the small artworks, using the collage method, for my contribution to incognito 2022. I decided to use floral imagery and this is my collage representation of a section of my xmas cactus. I thought the background desert (from a magazine) was appropriate for this subject.

Again from a magazine, the background colour decided that I would make an image of an iris.

I liked the contrasting colours of the cave as a background for this wild rose.

I blogged about previous incognito fundraisers here and here (2021), here (2020), here (2019) and here (2017). I don't know why I didn't blog about 2018 but I did participate!

collage cards

One of my visual activities during my studio residency at Signal Arts Centre was replenishing my supply of collage cards, which are always handy to have around for those special occasions or short correspondences. So when packing items to bring down to the studio, I made sure to include a supply of card stock, pva glue, glue stick and a folder full coloured paper scraps and bits of paper that I thought I would make use of. 

The first group of cards were simply based on a recent painting from the Memory Is My Homeland series. Florence Road: Butterfly Wall can be seen here and information on both the work for Memory Is My Homeland and the past four years of autumn residencies at Signal Arts Centre can be easily searched for on this blog.

As is my usual practice, I make several collage cards at a time with variations on a theme. The same but different!

Last summer I did a major clearout of books and magazines. I have been a subscriber to Aramco World for at least 20 years now (it is similar to National Geographic but with a focus on the promotion of understanding between Western and Muslim cultures). Before putting the magazines in the bin to be recycled, however, I meticulously went through each issue in order to rescue recipes (included in most issues) and colour images for later use. Some of these images made excellent background patterns for collage cards.

Here are a number of floral cards I made. At home my xmas cactus was blooming so I had done a few sketches in preparation for collages. The iris and wild rose are meaningful stand-bys for me.

I created another group of collage cards with the chimneys and wires motif that I haven't fully explored in my work.

Of course Fort Carré found it's way into the new collage cards - with the studio feeling positively wintry some days I can't help but reminisce with myself about the south of France! I haven't been to Antibes since 2018...

The last collage cards I made at the Signal studio are based on a photo I took of a rainbow and tree outside my house.

collage cards

Before nearly every special occasion (holiday, birthday, anniversary) I get out my materials for making cards and work away. I have previously blogged about collage cards here and here.While I use print and drawing media in cardmaking, I tend to make collages most frequently. I do not cut paper, I carefull rip shapes from it and only use a steel edge ruler for helping to tear straignt edges, such as when I want a coloured background or in landscape images. While liquid glue and an old credit card are good for spreading, a glue stick is the most convenient.

The detritus in the picture above was caused from tearing egg shapes from patterned wrapping paper. I always save scraps of different papers if I can imagine them being repurposed at a later date, and this is a good example of that.

Often cards are related to artwork I am going to make or have already made. This 1988 St Patrick's Day card (made for my "new" boyfriend - now my husband!) refers to a dream I had in the early '80s and subsequent artwork, Ocean of Life. I had also studied the poetry of Wallace Stevens in 1986 and adored the poem Our Stars Come from Ireland, inspiring the imagery of the green stars in churning water.

This postcard from 1988 was also based on a dream: on my first visit to British Columbia; although I didn't see any whales on my ferry trip from Vancouver to Victoria, my mind really wanted to! I remember wanting a durable backing for the card to make it from BC to Toronto, so I made do with a piece of cardboard from a cereal box.

Other cards have also been inspired by travel. This card was inspired by my visit to Sicily in 1997 where I saw some Greek ruins at Segesta.

Quite often I simply make cards from what is in front of me. In this case I simply reproduced the image of my avocado houseplant. I used some patterned green wrapping paper that I had saved in my re-use paper file.

Likewise, this get well card, made for my daughter in 2008. simplified the fish tank in her bedroom.

I am often lazy with images too, simply using egg shapes for Easter (as above), shamrock shapes for St Patrick's Day, and hearts for Valentine's Day...

Often I reuse images in the same year, if I am obsessively working on a project. In 2015-2016 I was hard at work on The Skipping Project (I refer to it here, here, here, and here), a multi-media project that was to be my MA thesis project (for personal reasons the project was never finished). I used the child's feet skipping rope in a number of cards. The rope in this card was made from a collage tape I made (using double-sided tape) from chocolate wrapper foil.

I used the skipping image again for Paddy's Day, though I replaced the shoes with traditional dancing hornpipes and drew the rope in as shamrocks.