rooftop archive 12 - the noughties

I think this might be the last post about the rooftop archive. For my penultimate rooftop archive post visit here and within that post are links to all the previous posts of the archive. Though this sketch is probably from 1991, I forgot to process it and post it in the correct decade of the archive so I decided I would include it in this post anyway! Although it is an undated sketch, I remember creating it in my studio in Toronto before I started the second group of paintings in the My Tower of Strength series. I have long since discarded the rest of the sketchbook (either an A4 or 8.5x11 inch) this sketch manages to survive all my various purges. I used a variety of media to create this sketch – metal leaf, oilstick and some turpentine brushed around some areas of oilstick.

In 2000 or 2001, I was still living in the middle of Bray on Florence Rd and was enjoying creating large plein air sketches in my tiny backyard. In this one I was regarding the upstairs window and the strange pipes surrounding it. I was sketching with watercolours and charoal on paper, 84 cm x 60 cm.

There was also a geranium plant out the back that had managed to survive untended for years before we moved in. Again this is mixed media on paper, 84 cm x 60 cm.

I think this painting of the flower lesser celandine is from 2001 (though I'm not entirely sure). It is untitled, acrylic on card, 88 cm x 50 cm.

One of the reasons I think these works are from 2001 is that I also did a very large painting of dying tulips on canvas that year, before I became pregnant, and these remind me of that work.

untitled, acrylic on card, 88 cm x 50 cm

untitled, acrylic on card, 88 cm x 50 cm

I haven’t eaten any physalis in a long time (I don’t know why) but for awhile I loved the fruit itself and also enjoyed drawing it – I especially loved the material contrast between the solid orange fruit and it’s delicate, papery wrapping. 

untitled, mixed media on paper, 60 cm x 84 cm, 2000

untitled, mixed media on paper, 60 cm x 84 cm, 2000

Rooftop archive 11 late 1990s

For previous posts from the so-called "rooftop archive" look at the most recent here, which gives links to all the others.

In the late 1990s there was a major fire at a printing company near to where one of my sisters lived. She told me that there was a big skip outside the establishment and reams of paper were being thrown into it. My husband (also an artist) and I drove over to check things out and came away with an abundance of grey heavy stock card, 88 cm x 50 cm, and large sheets of all-purpose cardboard. Because of this supply windfall, I felt very free to sketch on a large scale. In 1998 I had an exhibition planned for the following year, but was still unsure of what a new body of work would look like. I was fondly remembering my time living in rural Kerry, which had come to an end in the fall of 1996. One of the most amazing memories of this rural time was my sighting of Comet Hyakutake from the field in front of my house, Knockeen. On a clear night the stars in Kerry were magnificent. 

I must apolise for the sheen on these drawing/paintings, I was using gloss medium to thin the acrylic. I gessoed the grey card first and worked in thin layers of colour to build up a certain (unphotographable!) luminosity. In front of the house, there was a gate leading to a large field beyond and it was from this field that I viewed the comet above the outbuilding ruins beside my house.

I thought the gate itself was an important image and began combining it with other familiar imagery from my work. The figure here was the outline of a life size cut out I had made of my body using the all-purpose cardboard.

Again, this is an example of how I was combining past imagery with the image of the gate (which for me echoed the trellis that had appeared in earlier paintings and drawings).

 

Once I had started using flowers in my work, however, there was no stopping me. Grounding the heavy card with gesso, I decided to do some drawing with oilstick and graphite -- a combination that I still enjoy. I realised how much I like drawing and painting flowers and decided that this would be the subject of my next exhibition. I suspect that due to the size of this piece I could not afford the framing so it did not make it into Blessings, which showed first at Signal Arts Centre, Bray, in 1999 and then Cavan County Museum, Ballyjamesduff, in 2000.

The exhibition Blessings consisted of large acrylic paintings on canvas, medium sized oilstick & graphite drawings on paper and very small monoprints of both wild and cultivated flowers. This is an oilstick & graphite drawing from that exhibition. “Honeysuckle”, 43 cm x 37 cm, 1999, is framed and hanging on the wall in my bedroom.

Rooftop archive 10 - mid 1990s

I showed some of the drawings from 1992 that began my obsession with windows and the stonework ruins in the rooftop archive post, here. In that post I also give links to previous rooftop archive posts. When I moved to Ireland in 1993 I brought with me a series of large paintings that I had completed in Toronto the previous year and had full intention of creating more in this series. This series became the exhibition My Tower of Strength and toured arts centres throughout the island of Ireland 1994-1998.   

Early in 1994 I relocated to rural Kerry where I was reunited with my favourite castle ruin, ie, Ballycarbery Castle near Cahersiveen.

I was offered an exhibition at St John's Art Centre in Listowel first and thought it was the perfect place to display My Tower of Strength (a former church, open stonework walls) but I wanted more paintings in the exhibition and got to work on these window drawings, which were studies for the Ballycarbery paintings. 

There were five Ballycarbery paintings altogether, but I'm not sure which of these six drawings did not make it into my final decision plans for what I would paint! It may have been this one, but I'm not sure...

The Ballycarbery paintings, which were the brightest (predominantly yellows, greens and pinks) works in the series and all completed in early 1994 before the touring exhibition began. Although St John's  was the first to offer me a show, the touring began in Siamsa Tire, Tralee, who also wanted the exhibition at a slightly earlier date.

Ballycarbery Castle had a great many intact windows to choose from and I enjoyed drawing them. 

All of these sketches are acrylic on paper and 76 cm x 56 cm.

When I moved to rural Kerry, I thought the phenomenon of drying peat hanging out of ruined outbuilding windows was most interesting. Surprisingly, I never took this concept further than sketches and photographs, especially as I moved to a house near Portmagee in 1995 and my husband stacked peat in ruined windows of our own abandoned outbuildings! As with previous window ruin drawings, this is acrylic on paper, 76 cm x 56 cm.

Rooftop archive 9 - early 1990s

Yes, this rooftop archive is pretty big, but it has served a purpose to go through everything that was there taking measurements and photographing past work, and best of all PURGING work that I don't need hanging around to haunt me! I have recently blogged about the archive (installments 7 and 8) here and here. In installment 6 - here - I have also given links to all the previous installments.

As this piece is undated, I am relying on memory and circumstances to suggest that it was either from 1989 or 1990. It was created after my first solo exhibition in Dublin while I was living with my parents in Bray. It is of course based on dream imagery except for the crazy complicated lightning bolts – lightning configurations that I actually saw during a storm in Ontario  in the 1980s! This untitled work hung on my Mum’s bedroom wall (which had been my room when I lived there) for many years and was returned to me after her death in 2016. This untitled, mixed media work is 157 cm x 150 cm.

In either the spring or summer of 1990, I returned to Toronto to be in a group show with nine other young artists. I created the sculptural element of a work to exhibit while I was in Ireland (a trellis table holding a house with a fimo figure dancing among stars who could be viewed through a bay window on the second floor of the house). Behind the sculptural element was this oilstick drawing, Two Waterspouts. Amazingly, I still had the huge roll of Strathmore paper my mentor professor (sculptor Hugh Leroy) gave me while an impoverished art student at York University, Toronto, some years before. I gessoed the paper before drawing the waterspouts, 107 cm x 63 cm. The sculptural element had live roses added to it for the exhibition; that part of the artwork was sold and I do not have any pictures of it! 

I was living in Toronto, perhaps in turmoil, when I drew this work on Oct 20 1991 (very specific date written on the back of the drawing!). Tornado, graphite on paper, 102 cm x 66 cm.

Two mediums I still enjoy a lot are combined in this drawing that I created while living in Toronto in the summer of 1992. Foxglove, oilstick & graphite on paper, 76 cm x 49 cm.

 In the early 1990s I was quite obsessed with stonework and windows in both ecclesiastical and secular ruins around Ireland. I think this obsession started when I was on holiday here in 1992 and visited a friend who had moved to rural Kerry and ruins nearer to where my parents lived on the east coast as well as ruins in Clones, close to where one of my sisters was living at the time. I did large, loose sketches of a number of windows using monotones from acrylic black paint and I later used these sketches as research for a new body of paintings that I entitled My Tower of Strength (taken from the motto on my family coat-of-arms). These painted drawings are all untitled, acrylic on paper, 76 cm x 56 cm (or 56 cm x 76 cm), the specific ruins that they are based on can be found in Clones (a church ruin), 

Kerry (outer wall of Ballycarbery Castle)

and Wicklow (Killadreenan near Newcastle). 

It is only the stonework in the drawing of the church window at Clones that I recognise as making its way into a future painting. 

Rooftop Archive 8

I'm returning now to the so-called "rooftop archives", that is the portfolios and rolls of work that I pulled from the roof in the last few months of 2022 in order to actually see what was there and hopefully do some purging! The purging was successful in that I destroyed a lot of things whose moment had definitely come and gone, including all the chalk pastel cut-outs and drawings that I did while on residency at The Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig during the spring of 1989. I talk about about my first solo exhibition in Dublin here, the main reason I was on art residency but since I had most of the work done for the show by then, I spent most of my time winding down and having fun. This link also gives all the other links to previous posts about the "rooftop archives" or simply do a search for them on this blog.

I was surprised to find that I kept the irises as I had already thrown out tulips and roses at some other point! But dry pastel is very messy and I have no plans to ever install this work anywhere again, so it was easy enough to make a "trash" decision.

Though I like the drawings well enough, should I ever want to recreate the installation I would use paint rather than pastel.

I loved working large and freely, but there was no reason for me to keep these works once a picture and measurements had been taken (the rectangular drawings are approximately 100cm x 150cm or 159cm x 100cm).

I had made friends with painter Pat Moran (who I blogged about here) while at Annaghmakerrig and he called my studio “the playroom” as each day for several weeks I did large pastel cut-outs of flowers, whales, dolphins, swans and stars and affixed them to the wall. My studio became a space where my dreams could be immersive. Here is the dream imagery on the walls of my studio at Annaghmakerrig.

I can't remember how I affixed things to the walls -- I don't remember having blue tack, but perhaps I did or else just use loops of masking tape. The size of the cutouts is apparent from the chair and the sink area alcove. The figure caught in the trellis is the same figure which appeared in a lot of work and I associate with myself and the sea (as she turns into a red-sailed boat in the original series of drawings, which I talk about here).

I also made some of the stars green in colour as a nod to American poet Wallace Stevens, whose poem Our Stars Come From Ireland was a poem that I had been obsessed with for a few years by this time. 

At the corner of the room I decided to affix another drawing, mixing land, water and air (flight) together in the same space. Sure the stars had already prepared the way...

The final image in the studio is the rose rain area between the two windows. The next area leads to the start again: the drawing of the swan over the sea leading to the big cut-out swan flying over the flowers at the radiator.

 

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