Old Sketchbook Portrait Drawings

When I was looking for the cityscape sketches in my old sketchbooks prior to painting "Fractured City", I came across loads of sketches of people (family & friends) where I had used a variety of media. Here is a sample:

This is a pencil drawing of one of my sisters from a 1981 sketchbook. Her bed was next to mine, so I have loads of "Sleeping Dee Dee" drawings.

This is another sketch of my sister Dee Dee, this time awake. It is done in bue pencil crayon, perhaps I wanted to be atmospheric - but it is the only time I have ever used blue pencil crayon to sketch! The sketch is dated Aug 6 1981.

This pen sketch of my brother-in-law, Paddy, is dated May 16 1981, and was drawn while in the back seat of the car on the way to Pearson Int'l Airport in Toronto. One of my older sisters, Geni, her husband and baby daughter, Jesse, were returning to Ireland to live (at least Paddy & Geni were!).

Using a regular pen I wanted to show the form of the cat, Yoko, in my friend Sandy's arms. The sketch is dated July 21 1981.

 

This is a watercolour sketch of my friend Jay, June 27 1983.

This sketch of my (now) husband James was done in our first home in Ireland, Darby's Bridge, Co. Kerry in April 1994. Since I abhor "brown" I doubt I was using pencil crayon, more likely conté.

A pencil sketch of my husband from August 2001, reading in bed, at our first home in Bray, Co. Wicklow.

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!

London - Sir Frederic Leighton at the V & A

I was in London last week, and among loads of things that impressed me, I saw some work by Sir Frederic Leighton at the Victoria & Albert Museum. I've always had a soft spot for the pre-Raphaelite painters of the 19th century (my interest in illustration and romantic bent rearing their heads!) so was pleasantly surprised to see an exquisite tiny flower drawing of Leighton's in an exhibition of British drawing. Even more exciting though, I stumbled across rooms 102-107, a large corridor, where mock-ups, a full size "cartoon", and Leighton frescoes were exhibited. The corridor was somewhat dim, I presume to protect the work.

This is "The Industrial Arts as Applied to Peace" -- difficult to photograph because of lighting and size. For a sense of scale, please note that the figures are life size! The arched room is panelled with more Leighton works.

This is a detail of an arch panel.

There is a smaller painting of the fresco which is a full mock-up.

 But the most exciting piece for me was the full size "cartoon"  for this fresco. I also found out why they are called cartoons - but that is another story!

What magnificent drawing!

I love this lion's head handle on the side of a jug.

I was reminded of what had attracted me to Leighton's work back in art school. I was just starting my journey into dreams, psychology, psychoanalysis, etc. and came across an image of Leighton's painting "Flaming June".

I still lived at home with my parents in 1980, and my younger sister was a great model - when she was asleep! Here is one of my sketches of her from that time:

I later turned this into a small painting (I don't remember what happened to it). From the same sketchbook, here is the working out of some colour -- with a strong Matisse influence:

Dee Dee asleep appears in many sketchbooks, and I did a large painting of her in 1980 or 1981. (At the time, many of my friends would jokingly express surprise if they ever saw her awake!)