Rooftop archive 7: solo exhibition in Dublin 1989

Last week I gave all the links to the various posts I made regarding the rooftop archive, so rather than do that again, I am simply providing a link to that post here.

In the fall of 1988 I was offered an exhibition from Temple Bar Gallery & Studios in Dublin. The exhibition, my first solo show, was to take place the following spring. Other than some of the work, which has since been framed, I have not seen much of this work since 1989 so it was with great pleasure that these drawings were sighted again when going through the rooftop portfolios. 

Shepherdess I was the very first drawing I did in this particular style, which I always think of as sculptural: the paper is covered with graphite and the drawing created through careful erasure. I distinctly recall the inspiration for this image coming from a formation of bricks on a wall I saw while looking out the train window on my way in to Dublin one day. It is 76 cm x 56 cm and is from 1988.

This drawing, Figure with Rose, provided the image used for the exhibition invitation. It is also 76 cm x 56 cm and drawn in 1988. The exhibition was launched by the Canadian Ambassador at the time, Dennis McDermott. As well as plain graphite, I also used some coloured graphite for accents.

Prayer, graphite on paper, 76 cm x 56 cm, 1988

The Cloak I, graphite on paper, 76 cm x 56 cm, 1988

Rose Kiss, graphite on paper, 64 cm x 52 cm, 1989

Rose Rain with Thorns, graphite on paper, 64 cm x 52 cm, 1989

The exhibition also included some oilstick drawings of cloaked figures with roses, and some symbolist but figurative paintings on paper in oil and alkyd. Most of these works have been sold and I do not actually have images of them available. In any case, those pictures are not part of the rooftop archive! The rooftop archive also included rolled up works and one of the rolls contained the four large drawings from this exhibition. 

I remember how this drawing came to me fully-formed in a vision one night while thinking of mortality (a dear Aunt was suffering with a cancer that would eventually be fatal). 

Dream of the Time, graphite on paper, 100 cm x 150 cm, 1989

Rose Rain and Time, graphite on paper, 100 cm x 150 cm, 1989

After seeing this finished drawing (which I had yet to title), a friend of mine loaned me his book of Seamus Heaney’s poem “Sweeney”. When I finished reading the beautiful poem I thought of an appropriate title for my drawing, as for me the poem and the drawing were a portrayal both of madness and freedom. At the same time as my Dublin exhibition there was a two-person show in another Dublin gallery where the two male artists visually imagined Sweeney in their works on display. I remember being annoyed (and still am) that my female portrayal of Sweeney was not mentioned in the review of the male artists’ exhibition. To me it was a completely missed opportunity for dialogue!

Sweeney Among the Roses, graphite on paper, 100 cm x 150 cm, 1989

This was the very last drawing I did for the exhibition while on a residency at The Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig. 

Whirlpool, graphite on paper, 100 cm x 150 cm, 1989

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.

Memory Is My Homeland at Rathfarnham Castle room 3: The Dining Room

 The third room of my exhibition at Rathfarnham Castle is accessed by walking across the back of The Saloon from The Pistol Loop Room and entering through the curved door. To see works related to this exhibition and in-progress, simply do a search for Memory Is My Homeland on this blog.

While it is furthest from the door that one has just entered, Kingswood is the largest piece in this room and being so colourful one tends to walk over to it first. 

This is my representation of the house in Toronto that I grew up in, the three figures representing moments of my life: a young child stands on the front lawn by the hedge on her Communion Day, wearing the purple cape that her mother made for this occasion, a young teen reading and tanning on the steps (every summer for several years) and the young woman in her early 20s leaving home to start her life as an artist and writer. The house had much flora in the front yard, back yard and side garden. One of the lilac trees in the back yard was hit by lightning when I was a child so there was a stump that didn't flower, but the other side of the tree remained healthy. I didn't put everything in the picture but as much as I could... 

Moving away from the big picture, on a false wall of its own is Home. Although this piece is much earlier than the others (it was created in 2009) and began as part of another series of works, I thought it belonged with these works. The little icon is based on a drawing my child did, of my current home in Bray, when my child was about 6 years old.

Turning away from Kingswood and Home, one is attracted by the bay windows and the plasterwork on the ceiling. There are two false walls in niches to either side of the bay windows and these contain the last pieces in the exhibition.

The House with the Red Door and The House with the Green Door are representations of the earliest homes of my life, in Cabbagetown, in Toronto's inner city. I actually remember a few things related to each house but mostly I differentiate them by the colour of their door. We moved from the former to the latter when I was 2 years old and my family moved from the latter when I was 4. The print Swing Chain, in the Pistol Loop Room, specifically relates to the low chain fencing separating the front lawn of The House with the Red Door from the footpath. I had remembered swinging on a chain fence as a toddler and thought this was a false and impossible memory until one day, as an adult, I passed this terrace of city housing while on the streetcar in Toronto and saw the low chain fences as they appeared in my memory! Cabbagetown got its name because in the late 1950s and early 1960s there was a huge wave of Irish immigrants who ended up living in this area (my parents and siblings among them).

The final piece in the show, Kingston Road: Waiting, is a representation of me in my twenties at my bachelor apartment in the upper beaches area of Toronto (West Scarborough), where I lived for several years. The curtains behind me are actual sheers that I had painted for an installation about HOME that I worked on while completing on my BFA at York University. I was, of course, waiting for my career and life to really begin. A few years after finishing uni, I moved to Ireland, where I had my first solo exhibition in Dublin at Temple Bar Gallery & Studios in the spring of 1989.

Collage Cards 2

I have been trying to process everything from the Grey Box find of last year, and make some sense of all the various items found in it. There were so many miscellaneous sketches and cards - the cards often acting like sketches. Sometimes the card came first - as in this abstract xmas card from 1982 (I think). For a series of individual cards I painstakingly attached tiny strips of gold tape and silver paper ovals (that for me were a development from my stem-less tulip paintings); the colour was added with wax crayon and burnished. I made about 30 of them of them I think, taking care of my xmas card list...

Continuing the theme from the xmas cards, I created small works in the following year on wood blocks that I had readily available (off cuts from various projects). As I gave a number of them away as gifts a few small pieces survive, along with this piece that I kept for myself. I did a couple of larger paintings on sheets of plywood while at university, but these are no longer in existence.

From 1983 (and for several years) I had many watery dreams of figures and dolphins and this imagery made its way into many drawings and paintings. Though undated, I think this oilstick drawing dates from 1983 or 1984 and is probably one of the earliest appearances of the gold tumbling figures in the water.

I had been on holiday in Ireland in 1987, visiting my parents, and became enamoured by watching individual rainclouds in the distance over the sea and images of these clouds made their way into my watery paintings, like this one "Meeting", oil on canvas.

In 1988 I used the image of the gold figure tumbling above the water as a design on a St. Patrick's Day card for my new boyfriend (now my husband). I found stripey paper to use as gold rain and I added the green stars as a reference to a line in William Carlos Williams poem "Our Stars Come from Ireland". 

As well as making an appearance with other elements in numerous paintings and drawings, the rainclouds also appeared in their own right on a birthday card for my Dad in 1989.

The rain became a little more menacing I guess in this postcard from 1989.

I moved to Ireland in 1988 and started work on a completely new body of work as I had left all my dream paintings in Toronto. This new work consisted of a large group of figurative drawings where I covered the paper in graphite and used an eraser to draw. Later works in this series got more colourful as I drew with large oilsticks. This body of work became my first solo show, at Temple Bar Galley & Studios, Dublin in 1989. 

In February 1989 I used the theme in a Valentine postcard sent to my boyfriend in Toronto.

I have always loved the stone walls and stonework ruins found everywhere in Ireland, totally different architecture than I had grown up with in Canada. I was back in Toronto when I sent this Mother's Day card to my Mum in Ireland in 1990.

At the time, although I was back in Canada, I started work on a series of paintings based on windows from ruins which were part of my life in Ireland. I exhibited a number of these paintings in a group show at Cedar Ridge Creative Centre in Scarborough in 1992. I brought the series with me to Ireland when I returned in 1993, completed more in the series and started a tour of the large group under the exhibition title "My Tower of Strength". The exhibition opened at Siamsa Tire arts centre in Tralee, Co. Kerry and its last stop was The Courthouse Arts Centre in Tinahely, Co. Wicklow in 1998 taking in a number of galleries in between. This painting, "The Holly & the Oak", is acrylic on canvas, 122 cm x 91.5 cm (4' x 3'), 1992 is in the collection of the Office of Public Works, Ireland. The window is structurally based on Raheenacluig - the church of the little bell - a ruin on the side of Bray Head, in the town where I live.