Pat Moran

While going through the multitude of items in the roof portfolios, I came across the poster for my friend Pat Moran’s 1988 exhibition at Temple Bar Gallery & Studios in Dublin (where I held my first solo exhibtion the following year).

It was a great loss to his many friends and Ireland’s art world when Pat died suddenly in 1992, just a week after I had last laughed with him. I think I have a letter from Pat from 1989, and also the birthday card he made for me. 

On the other side of the painting he included the dedication and a postcard he found. He told me this postcard reminded him of the studio I had in The Tyrone Guthrie Centre, which was full of large dolphins, flowers and star cutouts that I drew and stuck to the studio walls. When Pat visited my studio there, he called it the "play room".

I googled Pat expecting to find some images of his work but was surprised not to find anything online. However, there was a Gandon Editions catalogue from a retrospective held at The Crawford Gallery, Cork in 2003 available and I promptly ordered it from Kenny's Bookshop in Galway. A few days later I was perusing the catalogue.

I particularly liked his Self Portrait with Isabella Rossellini and the look of surprise on Pat's face in the painting. 

I thought I would include  here a couple of  images of some paintings of The Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig, which was where Pat & I first met in the spring of 1989.

archive from the rooftop!

A few weeks ago I remembered having done a drawing of Macha running with horses (something she was forced to do while pregnant and so cursed the men of Ulster to be severely debilitated in time of greatest need) when I lived in Kerry. I was sure the drawing must be in one of the portfolio or flat storage boxes that have been relegated to the attic roof for the past few decades. I was determined to, at the very least, do an inventory of the work in these portfolios while looking for the drawing and perhaps purge a few things on the way. First up was a flat box portfolio that I recall being made to house a submission of drawings to Canada's Artbank in the early 1990s, prior to my big move to Ireland. 

My work wasn't bought (I don't even remember what I submitted) but the durable portfolio has proved itself very useful for unframed work.

The work inside was a nice surprise too and I began an inventory. Photographs and measurements were taken of all works, and then I began separating work into piles to keep or to purge.

I'm glad I kept the two self-portraits from the early 1980s and they went into the pile to still keep.

When I worked in the Records, Archives & Museum Dept. of the Toronto Board of Education, a clean-up/clear-out of perceived junk was being done. I was offered a huge, double-handled porfolio and gladly took it off the TBE's hands! All kinds of things were inside it that I didn't expect to see. I had been searching for years (in the wrong places, obviously!) for my copy of a Day in the LIFE of a Bull Dyke magazine by Canadian artists Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan. There was a photocopy of a memorial to my Dad that appeared in The Bray People in 1995. There was a large, handmade calendar page from my busy final month in Toronto in 1993 giving a daily account of my doings (packing, garage sales, meetings with friends, gigs, literary readings. I was also surprised to see some fine drawings that I did for a Community Employment Scheme in which I participated in 1990: my task was to create drawings of historic sites and sites of interest around Wicklow for possible use in tourist walks brochures. The brochures were never made, so nothing came of it, but it was nice to see these illustrations again.

That large portfolio also contained art postcards and invitations from friends' exhibitions that were mounted in acetate so that I could hang them on the walls of my apt for inspiration. The relevance of some of the press clippings I found wasn't apparent to me - I guess I liked the pictures! There were also some experiments with media for specific projects; these items I know can be discarded once I have pictures and measurements.

In another portfolio there were smaller bodies of work, idea sketches and work belonging to my husband. 

It was interesting to see some of this work again, much of which I had entirely forgotten about. I never found the Macha drawing, but at least I have organised the works that I am keeping. I only returned TWO portfolios to the roof for storage!

There was also a large rectangular box that contained unwieldy plates of glass and some oversize pictures. The last portfolio I went through was a makeshift wooden portfolio that I was sure hadn't been opened since the late 1980s. So I cut the tape! I was wrong, there were some things from the early 1990s, mostly life drawings from various sessions -- all of which have been purged (again, after they were photographed and measured). After nearly four decades as a professional artist, I finally don't feel that I have to prove I am able to draw! Of more interest to me in this portfolio were several posters - one from the play Boss Grady's Boys by Sebastian Barry and another of an exhibition of paintings in Dublin, Local Colour by Pat Moran (RIP). I had met both Sebastian and Pat at The Tyrone Guthrie Centre in the spring of 1989. Pat gave me the poster from his exhibition the previous year and I attended the premiere of Sebastian's play at The Peacock Theatre in Dublin that summer.

Matisse and Me!

There is a huge show at the MoMa, New York about Matisse's cut-outs, and I have been enjoying all the images of works, films, photographs of Matisse in his studio, etc. that are available on the internet (the MoMA facebook page keeps posting them, so no need for me to reproduce here). The show was originally in London's Tate Modern last year, and somehow I missed the hype, so sadly didn't see it. Apparently the MoMA show is an expansion of that one. With all this imagery and information floating around, I have been reminiscing about my relationship with the master, who I freely admit has influenced my work. I think this is obvious from some of my very early work such as this Sleeping Dee Dee, oil on canvas,122 cm x 91.5 cm, 1980. 

The picture above is a re-photograph from a polaroid - I don't actually have any other documentation of this piece. I don't know if the painting still exists or not; I gave it to the model (my younger sister!) quite a long time ago.  As well as Matisse, I was also influenced by an unknown painter who attended Parsons School of Design in New York. Before I painted this, a friend of mine had started attending that art school, and a rep from the school came to give the students in my art school a talk. The rep handed out the PS of D prospectus which included a painting where the shadows were painted light blue. At the time this was a revelation to me and it is apparent that I did the same thing with my shadows at the first opportunity!

I did so many drawings and paintings of my sister while she was sleeping that friends who had not met her asked if she was ever awake. This Sleeping Dee Dee is smaller than the one above, oil on masonite. Again, I have no documentation of this other than this re-photograph of a polaroid.

This is an oil on masonite painting, also from 1980 of a woman who I had met in a bookshop near my art school. She was looking for a house-mate and I rented a room from her for one month, my first foray away from home.

Matisse's cut-out show also made me think of how I enjoy the playfulness of  art work. In 1989 I had a residency in the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, ostensibly to create new work for my first exhibition in Dublin. However, due to availability (or lack of) at the Centre, I had all but one drawing complete for the exhibition by the time I was granted the residency. In many ways this was very liberating: I was not under any pressure, had a large studio to work in, food was provided with fabulous dinners being prepared by someone else and a variety of artists (playwrights, poets, musicians, sculptors, performance artists, other painters) on location for lots of interesting discussions over coffees and dinners,

So once I had the last drawing complete for the exhibition (a large black and white, graphite, figure drawing), I changed direction and got out colourful pastels, scissors and blue tack. Using imagery from my dreams I created an entire temporary environment in the studio.

It was at The Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig that I met and became friends with Dublin painter, Pat Moran, who dubbed my studio "The Playroom". Unfortunately Pat died suddenly in 1992 at the age of 30, and is sadly missed by the Irish art scene where his expressionist, figurative painting and drawing is known.

Further to my interest in "cut-outs" as a process, this picture of me in 1993 with some of my paintings from the My Tower of Strength series shows how I used cut-outs (the birds above the paintings) to help me figure out composition puzzles.

Sorry for the poor quality of photos in this post, but all images are re-photographs of existing photos and used as part of my training in GIMP, a free software programme which I am learning in order to replace my reliance on PhotoShop!