Inspiration from dreams, part 2

This is a very tiny gift sculpture I made for my boyfriend (now my husband) when we were separated by an ocean in 1988. It is based on a sculpture I made in a dream I had around that time. The chairs are moveable. I also think the dream itself was inspired by my mentor at university, sculptor Hugh LeRoy, who I had taken drawing classes with and also asked him to mentor me in independent studies in painting for my final two years in university. Before I had ever met him, I read a review in ArtsCanada about a sculpture he had made featuring an "order" chair and a "chaos" chair. Hugh was also profoundly interested in dream-induced creativity and introduced me to left-handed drawing as a useful method to encourage freedom in drawing.

In 1995 I was living in Kerry and amazed by all the calla lily plants on rural home lawns. But when I dreamed about them they were brightly coloured instead of white. I made a Father's Day card for my Dad that June, with an image of the dream calla lilies. My Dad died a few months later, and I created the piece "Dreaming for Dad" on 2 large net curtains and the companion small icon diptych. When I exhibited them the following year with other works, "Pastures Green", at The Basement Gallery in Dundalk (now called An Táin Arts Centre) I installed them in a separate room so that a life-death passage was clearly represented. I loved the way the lighting reflected muted images of lilies on the walls.

While at a studio residency in the spring of 1989, I enjoyed playing with my dream imagery to create a temporary installation in my studio space at The Tyrone Guthre Centre at Annaghmakerrig. Another painter friend referred to my studio of cut-outs as "The Playroom".

I had been granted the residency to finish work for my first solo show in Dublin, but I only had to complete one large drawing for the exhibition and then I was free to let myself go. I enjoyed drawing images with pastel, cutting them out and affixing them to every wall in the studio.

I know I created this piece sometime after the mid-1980s, based on a dream where I was surrounded by water (but remained dry, kind of like the parting of the red sea in CB DeMille's "Ten Commandments" film) and saw a red-sailed boat in the distance. This is a large (about a metre squared I think) painting/collage on Strathmore watercolour paper - a roll of which was given to me by Hugh LeRoy because he was fed up seeing me disrespect my own work by using newsprint for all my best drawings...I know this work still exists, and is beautifully framed, because it was bought in the '80s by a colleague who is now a very dear friend.

This is another piece, also painted on Strathmore paper (from a huge roll) around the same time as the one above, a variation on the same dream theme. However, I am pretty sure this work no longer exists, other than in my mind.

In my last year of university, 1986, I participated in a group show at the Winters college gallery (at York University in Toronto) and with some other work, presented these large paintings (each panel of the triptych and diptych is 4 ft x 3 ft) based on the red-sailed boat dream theme. Both of these paintings no longer exist, having fallen prey to one of my "Great Purges", a necessity when moving back and forth across continents.

These dream sketches managed to survive, having been recently discovered in my "Grey Box" archive. I know the drawing on the left is created on blotting paper (a nice blurry water effect) and the sketch on the right was created while on holiday in Ireland in 1984, presumably depicting a dream I had during that holiday.

Christmas tree!

The xmas tree was picked up this morning, and we'll be decorating it on the weekend, so we are definitely feeling like the season is in full swing. I didn't take any photos of the tree selection process, but thought I would celebrate "tree-ness" by sharing some pix of cards I made in previous years which included a tree in them. I mentioned in previous posts that I had re-discovered a grey box full of small artworks and cards earlier this year, and also a huge selection of cards that my Mum had held on to over the years were returned to me. So these images are from the Grey Box and my Mum's archive. 

This was my card from 1986. The lino print image was printed on different coloured papers. At the time I was living in a bachelor apartment in Toronto, and the image depicts my hanging planter disguised as a xmas tree, my favourite armchair (from my family home) and a squiggle of lights that I had hanging across the window in my room.

Originally I was going to do this as a lino print, but then decided I wanted to use specific colours (gold & green) so made stencils. This card is from 1989 and at the time I was basing a number of paintings on dreams, in which dolphins featured. I stylised the dolphin pair such that their combined inner outlines formed the shape of a tree.

In 2000 I simplified the card by using collage and stencilled elements in my very stylised triangular trees.

In 1994 I was living at Darby's Bridge, Kells Bay, Co. Kerry, and decided to feature the nearby humpback bridge, which gave me my address. It was a Christmas card so I added a tree to my lino block design!

Small gift works

More frequently in the past than nowadays, I would make small works of art as gifts for people -- close friends and family. Most of the time these gifts served the same purpose as my card-making does, i.e., to figure out something prior to a series of works or as a continuation, on a small scale of an idea that is current.

Recently my mother returned a small piece I had given to her in the 1980s as she was running out of storage space. I was doing a lot of work based on dreams and made several gifts in this series, where I painted on glass and painted on the reverse side so that the image would be visible in a mirror behind the glass. The glass and mirror components would be held together within a colourful box frame, like so:

My "Grey Box" find of last year revealed the plans for several of these works.

I am pretty positive the one given to my Mum & Dad was the first.

Here is a detail of the piece above, in which the reflected image of the boat and star are apparent.

I know I made several in this series but cannot remember who the recipients were! The following 3 plan drawings may or may not have been realised as small works -- I don't actually remember. I was planning to paint the frames blue (for water) but obviously changed my mind (at least with the piece that had belonged to my parents).

 

Also in the mid-late 80s I was doing a lot of symbolic figure drawing. I am sure I planned to frame this piece, but I don't think I had planned to have a mirror behind it.

I must have had a collection of glass panels, as I painted this figure on the same size glass as the mirror piece above. I scratched into the paint from the reverse side. 

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.

Paper doll cut-outs!

Before I was old enough to go to school, I remember my Mum making me paper doll cut-outs to play with. Her little drawings were formulaic and I remember how she would start with 3 incomplete heart shapes which would eventually turn into a hairline, bathing suit top line and then a bathing suit bottom line (where the legs joined the torso). The paper doll had points for hands and feet and the legs were joined. But I was fascinated by how the end product was always a paper doll that she would cut out and then put under semi-transparent writing paper in order to trace different outfits over the figure, which could then be cut out. I loved these cut-outs and she only stopped making them for me when I was about 7 -- she told me I could draw better than her and could now make my own. Perhaps my Mum was just too busy (I am from a family of 10 kids, and I have 2 younger siblings) but I was quite confident also that I could make my own paper dolls. 

I most certainly did make my own over the years, but I also enjoyed ready made cut outs. Recently I was telling someone about my Ginny Tiu cut outs which I remember as my first store bought cut outs. I loved Ginny Tiu, a child piano prodigy from Hong Kong who made regular appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show in the 1960s.

 At Xmas time in the 1960s one of my favourite surprise gifts was a miscellaneous box labelled "Time for Play" and it had a big clock on it. The contents included various games, puzzles and learning cards (such as how to tie your laces, how to tell time) but I remember more than once the box included Midge cut outs. Midge was Barbie's best friend, or at least she was in the 1960s!

One of my sisters and I made cut outs out of just about anything. We always looked forward to when the catalogues (for major dept stores in Toronto -- Eaton's and Simpson's) went out of date because then my Mum gave them to us to do with as we would. We would spend ages in our room cutting up the catalogues -- not only did we have a great population variety, but we could build flat dream houses. [With store bought paper dolls we always removed any tabs as we played with cut outs horizontally not vertically -- i.e., flat on the floor.]

I remember one time my sister and I cut up another sister's Rupert books. We actually didn't think she would mind, as we only cut out the characters that appeared in the page corners where you turned the page, Even though all the print for the stories was completely intact, we were still in big trouble...

So a few months ago I re-discovered what I now refer to as the "Grey Box". I was looking for some papers and opened a file box to be surprised that it was full of sketches, drawings and doodles which had somehow escaped the numerous purges and house moves I have made over the past almost 35 years. I was especially surprised to find two sets of cut outs that I made when I was around 17, occupying myself while I was sick in bed.

This young girl must have been my alter-ego as all the clothes are copies of the clothes I owned, except the green table-cloth dress which is based on a party dress belonging to one of my sisters. I say "alter-ego" because I considered the pose elegant while I thought I was clumsy and the figure is a blonde while I had dark brown curly hair...

These "medieval" cut outs were made around the same time. I think I was sick for a week (don't remember what was wrong with me!). I gave everyone names from Arthurian legend so Gorlois, Duke of Cornwall was the red haired man in green and blue, while the young fellow in the brown laced "leather" with puffy yellow sleeves and grey-green cape I named as Ambrosius (for Merlin's father according to writer Mary Stewart anyway!). I don't think I was naming people accurately for the legends, just the general character and names that I liked. I know at least several were just my imagination.

A few years ago there was a big Bowie "fashion" exhibition in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. Although I didn't get there myself, my cousin in London did, and knowing how I was both a Bowie and a cut out fan sent me this memento.

Grey Box Archive 3 - Dreams

I thought I would post some more pix from the so-called Grey Box Archive -- the box of small scale drawings & sketches that I re-discovered a few months ago. All the work in the box I had completely forgotten about, or if I had remembered any of it I thought I had destroyed ages ago. The following sketches are all based on dreams, all of which I remember having while in Ireland, except perhaps the last one, based on several dreams I had in Toronto in the summer of 1983.

Sketches above and below are from the same dream, about the house I grew up in Toronto. I remember having this dream while visiting my parents in Ireland during the summer of 1984.

I remember this being a very bright and chaotic dream -- moons and pink balloons seemed to be having an attic party, I came upon the party via a trap door in the floor (apparent on the left middle side of the drawing). This was another dream I had during that summer visit to Ireland in 1984.

Another moon dream, with a temple and journey to boot. Who knows. I think this was from either the 1984 holiday in Ireland or a later visit to my parents in 1987.

I know I did the next two dream collages while in Ireland, possible when I had moved over in 1988. 

The plane crash on the island did not refer to the Lockerbie disaster, though that event might have prevented me from sending this in the post as it was around that time.

In 1983 I had a series of dreams about dolphins, one of which was a group of dolphins leaping in turbulent waters. I then had a dream where figures were bouncing, foetally, in turbulent waters as an exact echo to the dolphin dream. I used these images of dolphins and foetal figures in water for many years in paintings and drawings. I started using the separated raining clouds after viewing clouds like this over the sea in Ireland in the late 80s and continued with that imagery (as gold rain) in many paintings and drawings between 1988 and 1992.

Grey Box Archive 2

 I mentioned a few posts ago that I discovered a box of drawings and sketches while looking for some paperwork. So I thought I would post a few more. The pencil sketch below is from the early 1980s, of the basement bar at the house where I grew up in Toronto. My parents returned to Ireland in 1983, so I was probably getting maudlin or nervous about the impending doom!

The wind is absolutely howling outside my window so this charcoal sketch seems appropriate. It is of the Irish Sea on a stormy day in either 1989 or 1990 when I had my earlier (second bout?) of living in this country.

In the summer of 1990 I returned to Toronto, and participated in a group show "Me & 9 Others" at the Orient Building at Queen & Bathurst. This is a sketch of the piece I later put together as part of an installation. It is an elongated house on a trellis. My Dad helped me build the house and the trellis (which in the final piece I painted yellow). In the final piece, you could peer in the window to see a figure surrounded by floating stars (made of fimo) and I wove live roses into the trellis, rather than scattering them; over the course of the exhibition they wilted and dried. Behind the sculpture was a large piece of paper, half left blank and the other half with an oilstick drawing of two waterspouts over a stormy sea. This piece is not documented very well -- I have a couple of polaroid details (somewhere...), The sculptural element was bought by poet Janette Platana, but that was 25 years ago, so I don't know if she still has it!

 This watercolour is from 1990 and was created in Ireland, but I don't remember exactly where -- Bray or Howth perhaps?

Grey Box Archive

I was looking for some specific old paperwork last month, and I thought it was in a particular grey file box below the shelves in the stairwell. To my utter surprise the box did not contain the expected paperwork, but instead it was an archive of sketches and small works from the 1980s! 

In 1983 I was experimenting with encaustic and collage and this small piece on board was the starting point for a series of works on paper using cutouts of hands to explore gestures.

During the early 1980s I first started my practice of recording my dreams through both writing and image.

Though I don't remember the specifics of this or the above dream, I know they were dreams that I had while on holiday in Ireland in 1984.

In this sketch I was trying to simplify dream imagery of my home and a ladder that kept appearing in dreams. The home image was apt as my parents had sold the house in Toronto and returned to Ireland.

While on that holiday in Ireland I also did a fair few self-portraits in different styles and different media. This is pen and marker in my sketchbook.

The dressing table in the room where I was staying had a large mirror which accommodated my self-portraiture! This picture is limited watercolour and ink.