Rathfarnham Castle - wall textures

 A few weeks ago I was at Rathfarnham Castle to see the current exhibitions, which I blogged about here and here, but I also wanted to have some photos taken of the various wall textures. From previous blogs, about Rathfarnham Castle and other old and/or ancient sites, you will already know how these things fascinate me! As I am getting a small brochure made for my own exhibition, Memory Is My Homeland, in Rathfarnham Castle next spring, I decided I wanted some of the building's texture to feature in the background of the brochure, images of my artwork and information in the foreground. The first floor of Rathfarnham Castle, where the exhibition will be, features amazing walls especially in The Dining Room, where most of these pictures were taken.

This pic is from the same section of wall but leaving out the structural "framing".

I think this is actually outside The Dining Room near the stairwell, but I really love the way the plasterwork restoration has left some of the bare wall structure to be revealed.

Whether the peeling is from ancient wallpaper or paint jobs, I love the layering that has been left visible on the surface of the wall when the building was restored.

This area doesn't have as much layering, but there is a pleasant grittiness to the surface.

This is from the same section of wall as the previous.

When restoring the castle, the walls of other rooms were not left so distressed and there is a fabulous contrast in some of the fine plasterwork restoration with the walls of The Dining Room.

I remember seeing images of the work of Canadian painter, Andrea Bolley, back in the late 70s when I attended the Gallery School at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto (which I have previously mentioned here), and at the time her paintings were obsessed with layers on construction hoardings and billboards. I found this visual obsession with time really interesting then and I still do. Toronto is most definitely a new world city, though, and images of the passage of time can only be gleaned from the modern. Rathfarnham Castle is Elizabethan in time period, so this layering shows time on a much older level! For further information on Rathfarnham Castle go directly to their website, here.

Anonymous Archive part 1 of 2

 A few weeks ago I was the recipient of a hit and run dump: the doorbell rang and no one was there but a large, filthy cardboard folder full of really old pieces of artwork had been left at the door. About a third of it was mine, and I knew an estranged sibling was doing a deep clean of their attic.

So, from the "anonymous archive" this is a very early - from grade 11 in high school, 1977 - oil pastel. I actually remember doing it; I was working from a rectangular landscape picture and decided to draw it in a circle, making everything curvy.

I think I must have liked using oil pastels (now I prefer materials more extreme - either chalk pastels or oilsticks - which are on opposite sides of the spectrum). I think this oil pastel still life is from grade 12, late 1977 or early 1978.

When I was in grade 12 I received a scholarship to the Art Gallery of Ontario's Gallery School, which meant I had unlimited access to the gallery, and art classes on Saturday mornings. I was totally thrilled with the arrangement. The artist/teachers divided the classes into rotating groups to do life drawing, plaster mould-making (around clay sculpture) and printmaking. The printmaking module consisted of an introduction to lithography using paper plates rather than stone. I don't know what inspired this preparation sketch, perhaps my ideal landscape?

I was really surprised to see this print again, I had completely forgotten about it - I remembered learning about the principles of lithography and I remembered using a paper plate rather than stone, but I did not remember the image at all. Printmaking was my last module at the Gallery School, so it would have been created during the spring of 1978.

I started art school in September 1978 at Central Technical School's 3-Year Special Adult Art Programme, which was a free post-secondary art programme run out of a high school (though in a separate art building) by the Toronto Board of Education. The programme had a long history as it was founded to train returning veterans of WW1 into commercial art. The programme had a very good reputation for training would-be artists in both commercial and fine art as well as craft, with extensive facilities for sculpture, illustration, ceramics, photography, printmaking, life drawing, etc. In my first year I loved having both life drawing and life painting classes (3 hours each weekly). I still remember this model, Fred, was always very stately when clothed, and totally professional when not. This drawing and watercolour would have been done in early 1978 as we didn't actually "paint" in life painting during the first part of the school year.

Art Gallery of Ontario

I was in Toronto recently and took the opportunity to visit the Art Gallery of Ontario to see some work that was on my wish list. The exhibition From the Forest to the Sea: Emily Carr in British Columbia was first shown in London last year at the Dulwich Gallery, but as I knew I'd be in Toronto this summer I looked forward to seeing it in the Canadian setting. Carr's paintings were well complemented by artefacts from the First Nations which inspired much of her work and it was a joy to see them together.

I prefer Carr's looser work on paper, but the installation view gives an idea of the scale at which she was working.

I can't remember whether or not this is one of Carr's experimental gasoline paintings, several of which were in the show (paintings on paper where gasoline was used as a medium for the paint!), but it is a good example of her looser painting style.

While at the AGO, I was delighted to also see a special exhibit of a pair of paintings by Tom Thompson. The Jack Pine, according to the gallery didactic, was the painting found on Thompson's easel at the time of his mysterious death in 1917.

The West Wind, another iconic Thompson painting, is also dated 1917.

The Thompson exhibit also included the sketches/small paintings of these works. While I did "exit through the gift shop", I also found my way into a room full of another Canadian painter's work. I have always liked David Milne's dry brush drawing/paintings so it was lovely to see a whole room full of them.

I did not have time to do any further explorations that afternoon at the art gallery, but it was inspirational to see the work of these three great Canadian painters.