For you Hollie🌼

Thank you so much for being a beautiful ray of sunshine❤️

It is so saddening and heartbreaking that you were taken so prematurely. Your memory and laughter will never leave us and will live in all the hearts of those who had the pleasure to know you forever.

Rest in peace Hollie - gone but most certainly never forgotten 😔💔

✨“The world changes from year to year,

Our lives from day to day,

But the love and memories of you,

Shall never pass away” ✨

For Hollie,

Hollie, you were the sweetest kindest soul , you had an infectious personality and laugh and an inspiring motivation that kept not only me driven but everyone around you. You had an amazing sense of taste for music art and of course dark humor,

You were a fantastic friend, class mate and rep partner, we bonded over so much from sushi to Halloween costumes. You always had something interesting to show give or talk about, from eating pickled ginger from the tub or making cookies for the class you always had something to make someone happy. I remember the first time I said to myself "you are something special" When we had to make a group photo you had no problem giving ideas from the start. And that fire never ended.You suggested dominoes as the theme for our group which is ironic because your beautiful life and soul had a domino effect on everyone that had the pleasure to be touched by and for that I thank you.

Thank you Hollie thank you for being apart of my life and being my friend.

Dedication

This is my final post for First Year. I would like to dedicate it to our lovely and beautiful friend Hollie O’Connor. RIP.

Project Statement

I settled on ‘Motherhood as the Ideal’ concept reluctantly. People are slightly jaded of the topic and always wary of offending it as a sacred ideal. Also being middle-aged, a woman and a mother I felt it was predictable and slightly dull. So that’s why I introduced ‘Thelma’, my bad-ass alter ego. Thelma spends a lot of time in the laundry house which you’d imagine with giving it all that attention would be pristine and immaculate by now, but a bit like Thelma herself it still reigns chaotic and slightly disturbed. 

The mother-child relationship is explored using Christopher from The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. I wanted to juxta-pose a visual of the child holding the parent instead and I like how that turned out. I’ve included ‘a million painted rainbows’ as part of my own story from my son’s very early years as I struggled with personal loss and a new baby.  

I was lucky enough to be introduced to the work of Toni Morrison a few years ago and I immediately thought of The Bluest Eye and the scene with the dolls. My biggest worry was that I’d given the book away and that I had no dolls anymore! 

Painting concept: ‘story’

Conceptual art – Art Term | Tate

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/c/conceptual-art

Richard Long

A Line Made by Walking 1967

Tate

© Richard Long

Land art: To make this work Richard Long walked backwards and forwards in a field until the flattened turf caught the sunlight and became visible as a line. He photographed the work, as a means of recording this physical intervention within the landscape.

Fiona O'Connor

A Line Made By Walking    2020- 2021

Land art: To make this work Fiona walked backwards and forwards to her studio in the orchard for a year until the grass wore out and her crocs started to slide so bad in the muck she begged her only son Mackenzie to throw down a bit of gravel for pity’s sake if he ever wanted another spud dinner again. She photographed the work as a means of recording Mackenzie’s physical intervention within the landscape. 

Sketch book, studio notes, ideas from this term.

Painting concept: ‘story’

Still Life Exercise Acrylic on canvas 20″ x 28″:

Following on from yesterday’s class. Attempting to tell a story through a still life composition. Exploring movement through the odd angle I got from drawing with my left hand ( non-dominant hand). Adding tension with the doll on the edge of the stove-top, it looks like she’s going to topple off any minute, and is that a fire in the grate? Communicating  narrative by the expressive quality I’ve tried to give her eyes and hand to appear as though she’s appealing for help, from the artist perhaps? And the surprise element of Felix appearing in the mirror even though he’s not in the painting. Actually I put Felix in because he was nearest me but he could equally be a recurring motif and have symbolic meaning now that he’s no longer a door-stopper!

And here’s what I really think:

It could just be a poorly executed still life where it’s obvious the artist struggles with painting ceramics and hair and next time she will find a bald baby doll to paint instead.

Painting

Still Life Workshop with Eoin McCormack: Monday 26th April 2021.

This mornings workshop had lots of quick sketches, blind drawing, continuous line drawing and non-dominant hand drawing which is where this came from. When I used my left hand my angle was awkward but it gave me this great tilted perspective to work from so I used it for the 25minute drawing. We were encouraged to use a mirror to reflect ourselves, mine is above the stove so it’s hard to avoid it!  and I also used one in the still life arrangement. For colour I used pastel and charcoal on A1 cartridge paper. 

@eoinmclsad​

Painting concept: ‘story’ ‘motherhood as the ideal’ continued.

This piece was inspired by Toni Morrison’s beautifully written first novel The Bluest Eye. Eleven year old Claudia narrates the story.  This is an extract from a scene at Christmas time:

“from the clucking sounds of adults I knew that the doll represented what they thought was my fondest wish...What was I supposed to do with it? Pretend I was its mother? I had no interest in babies or the concept of motherhood. I was interested only in humans my own age and size.”

These dolls belonged to my youngest sister, luckily my mother never throws anything out. I used a sepia filter on my phone to try to recreate a sense of time past. The novel was published in 1970 but was set in 1940′s post depression Ohio. I gave away my copy of the book so I had to print off a dust sheet from the internet and wrap it around another book. 

I also like this one where my ‘Claudia’ doll is reflected in the mirror.

@eoinmclsad​

Painting concept: ‘story’

‘Motherhood as the ideal’ continued. Some of it was okay actually!

Our son’s birthday is in December so we always had another party in June when we could go outdoors. And he really loved a cream bun back then. This is a painting I did for him when he was five. I had just been to see the Alice in Wonderland film (on my own) he wouldn’t come with me to see it because there were no cars or tractors in it! There was only one other person in the cinema that afternoon and I had such a lovely time, on my own, in the dark, in peace, watching a visual feast of a film. 

I took the painting out into the garden today and photographed it. I used acrylic, modelling paste and glitter glue on canvas, 42″x30″. It was painted from my imagination at the time although I do own a cake stand like that and I did used to have a teapot exactly like that. 

This close up is using a snowflake filter on my phone. 

@eoinmclsad​

Painting

Thelma 4

‘Thelma knew there were days she just had to throw herself into the laundry.’

Inspired by @k00257714 Holly Mulhern’s self-portrait post today!

Black /white and colour photocopies of an old self-portrait on brown Kraft, parchment and cartridge paper using a water bubble filter on my phone.

Thelma feeling refreshed after the sixty degree ‘All Baby’ two hour wash.

@eoinmclsad​

Painting

Eoin McCormack's Painting Workshop Monday 19th April 2021:

Another high energy class today continuing with the timed self-portrait exercises. Materials: two mirrors, one on the wall and one hand held to get a back/side profile; Derwent pastel pencils with grey and black compressed charcoal on A1 cartridge paper. I did the bottom RHS colour sketch after the class.

@eoinmclsad​

Painting

Eoin McCormack's Painting Workshop: Monday 12th April 2021

Today we covered Still Life and Portraiture. It was a high energy class: 30 second drawings, continuous line drawings, blind drawings, longer drawings, everything we needed to get us into the zone. Drawing against the clock is a very focused exercise and allows no time to dwell on anything else. I even sketched my cats afterwards which I normally never bother to do because they always move. But today I was fast enough for them!

Still Life drawings of my studio using charcoal, pastel pencil, Indian ink and dip pens made from willow in semester one.

Self portrait exercises: charcoal on A1 cartridge paper. The bottom RHS pastel I did after the class on A3 Windsor & Newton Tints Pastel paper. It’s interesting with colour; in the middle one it looks like my sister and in the bottom one it looks like my brother!

@eoinmclsad​

story concept ‘Motherhood as the ideal’

‘a million painted rainbows’ Part Two. 

Chalk on A1 blackboard photographed in the dark using a torch. Text typed in Courier New on parchment paper.

Influences: Mary Kelly, ‘Post-Partum Document’ published in book form by Routledge & Kegan Paul in 1985. It was originally conceived as an installation exhibited in the 1970′s and 80′s documenting her relationship as a new mother. Mary Kelly is Professor at the Roski School of Art, University of Southern California. Her work ‘Port-Partum Document. Documentation III: Analysed Markings and Diary Perspective Schema 1975′ was purchased by the Tate Gallery in 1984 and is part of their permanent collection. 

Brian Maguire

Guest lecturer ‘Respond and let people know you’ve heard them.’

A hugely engaging and interesting speaker and artist. Born in 1951. Brian is from Bray in County Wicklow. He studied at Dun Laoghaire School of Art. His work over the years has been described as southern Irish ‘neo-expressionistic’. His influences are from the German, Kathe Kallowitz, the Norwegian, Edvard Munch and others of the Weimar period. He taught in Irish prisons for sixteen years as well as Dun Laoghaire School of Art and the National College of Art and Design. His work spans the controversial - portraits of paramilitaries from all sides and the altruistic - going to Juarez, Mexico to paint ‘the disappeared’ young girls from just a photograph handed to him by their mother. His empathy here is palpable and the film he created subsequently was in his words ‘for the mothers’. Unusually for an artist he looks constantly for ways to give back, that all is equal in the exchange, him as artist, they (or their families) as sitters. His works are generally done in acrylic on linen and can span huge scales. For example ‘Bentiu Camp South Sudan 2′ is 72″ x 196″. This was a project in tandem with Concern at the refugee camp with emphasis on the work being sold after and monies going to Concern. Brian has worked with a lot of NGO’s over the years. He spoke openly about the morality of using sitters and the need to constantly assess the process of giving back. He was very particular on the detail of his answers and how he wished to be understood. Included in the works shown were those who die crossing the desert into Arizona each year, the few buildings left in Aleppo, and bibical commissions that brought him to Manilla. Brian’s next trip is on a Fulbright Scholarship to Montana where he will engage with the many native americans on reservations in this state. His passion for taking his art practice on a nomadic tour of the deeply uncomfortable places most of us would be overwhelmed by is unlikely to stop anytime soon. He was hugely inspirational and I wish him safe travels.

Photo: Irish Arts Review, winter 2003

story concept

‘Motherhood as the ideal’

'a million painted rainbows' Part One.

Crayon on A0 cartridge paper

Fourth Year Presentation ‘Introduction to Painting’

Sarah-Jane O’Connell and Paddy Critchley who are about to graduate LSAD with BA’s in Fine Art Painting gave a talk last Tuesday on why we should consider Painting as our chosen discipline. Their work was very different to each other in style but they were united in their choice of Fine Art Painting. Paddy showed us his second year canvases where he experimented with being freer and less representational to really good effect. Both he and Sarah-Jane encouraged us to make the most of drawing from the classics at the Hunt Museum in second year. There will also be an opportunity to exhibit work at the end of that project. Sarah-Jane’s presentation showed her emerging from initially a ceramics elective to embrace body painting and collaborative clay performance art on film.  She advised us to be experimental and unafraid. She now incorporates digital painting with photography using the medium of the lens to move between 2D and 3D. It is interesting how both Sarah-Jane and Paddy use photography as an integral part of their process and it was good to hear we get a thorough grounding in photographic technique in third year. Paddy works a lot with monochrome photography and uses it as source imagery for his painting. He showed slides from a recent exhibition where he made more creative use of the space by using part of the canvas itself to project through and also bringing the original source imagery to sit beside the finished work. Their presentations contained a lot more than this - Tips on what to read; Blouin Modern Painters, Turps Banana; Buy lots of art materials abroad on Painting trips. Go on all the Fine Art Painting trips if you can and maybe a few other departments too! What galleries to see if you happen to be in Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Amsterdam. Thanks Paddy and Sarah-Jane for taking the time to do this. It was great to see your work and how it has evolved and the very best of luck in your future careers.  

Photo courtesy of Sarah-Jane O’Connell.   @sarah-janeart-blog