In the wonderful world of picturebooks

 From Beatrice Alemagna's What is a Child?

A page from Oh No, George! by Chris Haughton - note the fair trade symbol on Harris's bag

 Collages and one of the final illustrations for Shh! We Have a Plan by Chris Haughton

 From A Lion in Paris by Beatrice Alemagna

Collage workshop

A little visitor enjoying the children's artwork

This week I have been guiding tours and workshops for the Baboró exhibition 'A World of Colour' in the O'Donoghue Centre for Drama, Theatre and Performance at NUI Galway. This show was curated by Sarah Webb and features artwork by two of my favourite illustrators, Beatrice Alemagna and Chris Haughton, so I am in my element.

Alongside their work there is a growing gallery wall/window of photographs the lovely volunteer and I take of the amazing collages the children make (they can take the originals home, and we tell them it is a process similar to how the books were made). The children's creativity and their responses to the illustrations blow me away.

 I wrote a piece about the exhibition here.

Irish countryside, real and painted

Cutting back the hedge

Two preparatory paintings for the new book

And another few weeks have flown by... Since June I haven't had time to pause and take stock. This has been such a life-changing year, and on so many levels.

I got back from Germany over a week ago, but am still playing catch-up with everything. I didn't get to see everyone I wanted to see when I was over there, but I shall be back soon. It was very difficult saying goodbye to my family, especially this time, with my sister a new mom and her tiny baby boy. It doesn't get easier, this living away from the tribe (though part of the tribe lives here, too, which is wonderful and even more guilt-inducing at the same time).

The new house already feels like home, and we are loving our 'island' bed in the middle of the sitting room. We build a fire every night and have had some of our meals at the low coffee table. We are busy getting quotes from builders and insulation companies, etc., visiting DIY shops and getting started on the things we can do at this point. These involve tins of Annie Sloan paint and a hand weeder. All while getting ready for another exhibition, doing some work in the Uni (at least the teaching hasn't started yet) and attempting to meet some freelance deadlines.

We cut back the hedge to reveal not only more of the sea view with the silhouette of the steps in the limestone of the Burren, but also sloping fields with stone walls. All this can be seen from the dining table, where I set up my temporary office every day. This house is everything we could have wished for.

Whirlwind week

 Invites

 Bed set up in the middle of the sitting room, where we will live while doing up the house

Last week was a week of excitement and high emotions and big changes, and on a practical level of learning to "get my stuff done", to not dither, to make decisions quickly, to not question myself at every step. I moved out of the chalet (saying goodbye after almost seven years of living there on my own) and into our new house, all within two days and several car loads. We assembled our bed at midnight while drinking champagne, after I hadn't eaten all day (so maybe I didn't learn that much), and spent our first night in our new home, where I slept like a baby.

Meanwhile I was preparing for our exhibition opening, which was on Friday, and then I caught a plane to Germany at 7am the following morning. Somewhere in between we had house-related meetings (with no chairs to sit on) and had the phone line connected. We were catsitting and living between three houses for a few days, and staying with Branwell was a godsend amid the chaos of moving.

I borrowed a good camera and waited for the right natural light to take photos of the illustrations I finished recently, and Dagmar and I got news that our proposal for an exhibition in a festival in September had been accepted. I didn't have a second to pause and take it all in. We were overwhelmed by how many people turned up for our opening and supported us. And in my head I still live in the chalet; it hasn't sunk in that we have our own house.

Now there are more big changes happening, with a new addition to the family coming soon (my second nephew), and my heart is full.

Cake for calm

 

I would like to think that when I am quiet here it means life is just so full there is no time to document it, but the opposite is true: I find that when things are good, I have more energy and can do all the living and creating and blog about it all, and there is a nice flow to it. The more you do, the more you do.

At the moment I am so stressed about money, health, work, deadlines, problems with the car and the house that I haven't had the headspace for much else, apart from certain commissions and some passive planning and researching (i.e. listening to podcasts - this is a treasure trove for creative people). As a result of being stressed my energy levels dip even lower than usual, and I neglect my relationships with others and cancel or avoid social situations, which stresses me out more because I feel I cannot function and that I am a terrible friend/partner/daughter/sister/... I just about manage to pour energy into my relationship, but almost every other area of my life seems to be suffering.  And so goes the vicious cycle.

People close to me would point out that I have a tendency to catastrophise, and I am aware that in the grand scheme of things, my current situation is trivial, and I certainly don't want to turn into a hypochondriac, analysing each physical complaint when most likely the majority of my health issues are psychosomatic. But I am just so aches-and-pains-cannot-face-the-world tired.

As usual I am not doing an awful lot of the things that I know would make it all better (I am still convinced I would be a much better person if I meditated every day...), though I did get a run in this morning - as part of my attempt to make my working-from-home days more productive, I am implementing little tricks such as pretend-commutes, and it does help to get the exercise and fresh air and sunshine first thing. But somehow my 35-min jog (and some yoga) ended up taking up most of my morning, or so it seemed.

Our exhibition in August is suddenly panic-inducingly close, and I still can't get myself to work towards it.

Sometimes I try to have more compassion towards myself and remind myself that all the work stuff doesn't matter that much at the end of the day, and that I place too much value on doing, but the fact is that my sense of self is inextricably linked to my work as an artist and illustrator, and it is important to me. And that exhibition is a real deadline, one of many. And I love what I do and made this choice. And of course while I am working on something, I am in the zone and that begets energy.

So I am rereading Art and Fear, though I already know the reasons I am stuck.

And I am adding more of the things that help me calm my mind and feel energised (see photos):

|  I made another cake from this book - this one has butternut squash in it, and I used coconut sugar instead of caster sugar. It is so good.

|  Fresh flowers and finishing illustrations.

|  Being with dogs and cats and babies.

Colour and emotions

When teaching drawing and painting I am generally quite articulate (or so I hope): I am confident when I explain different  exercises or talk about elements of the painting/drawing process such as mark-making or perceiving with the right side of the brain. It can be more tricky to find adequate verbal descriptions for the non-verbal language that is artmaking, though there exists vocabulary that comes very close, and language stretches and can be wonderfully accommodating. I love reading books on art and the aha moments when a writer manages to convey in words what a certain arrangements of brushstokes or a line evokes.

There naturally has to be a limit to what can be said; visual art speaks for itself, and no amount of verbal description can conjure up what presents itself in lines, shapes, colour and composition.

I encounter that boundary regularly when it comes to colour combinations. This is when words fail me in class - a few weeks ago one of my students had chosen a palette that worked beautifully and that I had a strong emotional response to, but I couldn't say what that elusive quality was.

Of course there are the easier combinations such as 'autumn colours', 'candy colours', 'fresh/springlike', 'berry colours', 'retro', etc. that are familiar and that we immediately recognise. But others, when for example the perfect dusty blue is juxtaposed with a muted pale pink and naples yellow, and the atmosphere this combination creates is sublime, leave me wringing my brain for a verbal match that will do it justice. Colour is endlessly fascinating to me, and even though an intellectual understanding or analysis may well take away from the magic, I want to be able to talk about the ways colours relate to each other and learn more. Our emotional response hinges on our individual make-up, our history and preferences, but we share our humanity, so how we perceive colour is also universal.

Colour combinations are everywhere: In fashion, design, the natural world, the way someone has placed a few books together on a shelf. Created deliberately, intuitively and by accident, unintentionally, just by how and where things are in the world. I tear out corners of magazine pages in which the colours speak to me for whatever reason. While there are certain individual colours I always gravitate towards and I have my favourites (plural; I could not just pick one), the way these work with others and the endless number of combinations possible between all the colours that exist make this an area of interest that will never cease to fascinate, that will never be exhausted.

I read this piece by Andrew Marr on the artist Howard Hodgkin recently (the day after marvelling at my student's colour composition), and it was extremely rewarding, as he talks about the effect colour combinations have on the viewer:

"Layering a vivid orange across an arsenic green, crouched under a line of cobalt, sends messages to the brain; and those messages can be communicated, however inadequately, in language.
[...]
...dark greens, particularly dappled with apple greens, and strong verticals may produce a feeling of security in a hominid species that emerged relatively recently from the protection of forests."

He warns against using these ideas as a "handy visual grammar", but says there must be some truth in these colour-coded evolutionary messages. "Hodgkin uses colour in ways that may be at times highly personal and autobiographical but are more often in a long tradition, fully alive today."

Marr's article also captures something of the essence of Hodgkin's art. The first painting of his I saw (only in reproduction, but still powerful) was of a crowded hall (the audience at a concert or in the theatre - I can't find it online). It was almost abstract, but you could make out heads and the venue and how the figures filled the space, and you felt you were there with them. With just a few brushstrokes he had made the atmosphere of a crowded space palpable.

P.S.: The Howard Hodgkin page on Artsy.net is a brilliant resource.

Art highlights

 In the Rivera Room at the DIA, with sunlight streaming in

This summer I was lucky to experience two art highlights:

- I got to see Diego Rivera's Detroit Industry Murals, something that had been on my bucket list (which exists loosely in my head and across various notebooks; I have never written one as such). It was impressive, and the new audio iPad tour is worth listening to in full.

- Earlier in the summer a friend invited me to a film about the wonderful artist Pauline Bewick. It explored her creation The Yellow Man (and her Grey Man, representing a darker side, who emerged from sessions with a Gestalt psychoanalyst) and was absolutely beautiful.

Yellow Man Grey Man is available from the director Maurice Galway's website. He currently has a gorgeous picture of Pauline from the film on his home page. There is more information, including a short video, in the news section of Pauline Bewick's website. 

"It's rather sad really. I was searching for the perfect society. That's why I went to The South Pacific and that's why I invented The Yellow Man. He to me is perfection. I created The Yellow Man because if our society were made up of Yellow Men it would be a marvellous place." ~ Pauline Bewick

 ---------------------------------

On a much smaller - but personal - scale, I was delighted to come home to the second issue of Skylight 47, a poetry publication, which included one of my paintings. 

 

Tea-friendly activities

a kitchen moment

 anticipating Julian Barnes's new book

An eventful week usually requires a subsequent uneventful week for me, with mellow activities that can be accompanied by tea-drinking*. I have been catching up on reading books, papers, magazines and online articles. In terms of physical activity, I am doing my best to keep up the (lifelong?!) exercises for my knees, which has also led me back to doing more yoga and meditation again. This is good news for me and those around me. I am trying to practise mindful speech and limit complaining and other negative utterances, and it is not always easy, but when I manage it, I feel so much more at peace.

Today I finished the work I am submitting for the Rock Trust Postcard Art Exhibition in Edinburgh. I made mini versions of two recent paintings. I tend to work in fairly standard sizes most of the time, so when I go much bigger or much smaller, it is always exciting. When printing out scanned images of illustrations last week I got the idea to make a tiny book one day. In my aspirational life I have a big studio with the possibility to work on large canvases and be a sculptor, too. Alas, that might never materialise, so for economical reasons alone I should consider miniature art.

It struck me the other day that I haven't bought or wanted to buy anything other than essentials in months (books count as essentials...). There may have been one or two exceptions, but I cannot think of anything. As a wannabe minimalist I am very pleased by this. I wonder if it were different if I had more money**, but I think it is just a contributing factor. One thing I would like to buy is some new music, so I might treat myself to something this weekend.

*I am in a coffee subsitute (the barley/chicory/rye kind) and Moroccan tea phase at the moment, along with the usual green and jasmine green tea.

** I do love clothes.

Temporarily sedentary

One more week, and then one of the busiest times of the year will be over. I love working in the arts, but I am looking forward to having actual food in my fridge again and not just eye cream and a plate with acrylic paint (storing leftover acrylics in the fridge makes them last for days when usually they would dry straight away). 

This year I am exhibiting as part of the festival we are organising. It has made me go back to painting and colour after working on black-and-white illustrations, and while I will always love drawing and don't think of it as inferior to painting, I am enjoying the tactile quality and creaminess of working with paints so much I want to go out and paint murals. (I won't. I do tend to work in rather small formats.)

Today was the first time in weeks that I walked for the sake of walking, under a blue sky after days of apocalyptic weather. I want to run a half marathon in May or July, on Inishbofin or Achill - I am still undecided -, but I haven't been for a run since I got back from Germany. At least it is good to know that I crave exercise. 

One early morning this week I had a decadent bath with rosemary oil instead of a shower before going to work, because my muscles ached from doing nothing. I am usually an evening bath person, but I have a feeling there will be more morning baths from now on. 

Sorry, Cy

"But at that time I did not understand at all how to make the lines and shapes and colours, simply by the pattern they made together, produce a direct emotional effect, one that was apart from what objects of the external world were actually depicted in the drawing. In fact, I did not then understand in what sense painting was a sensory organic language rather than an idea language." 

(Milner, Marion, On Not Being Able To Paint, Routledge, Hove 2010, p.111)

I saw my first Cy Twombly (who died in 2011) in Frankfurt on a school trip and was bemused by what to my teenage eyes looked like an accident with a pencil. While there undoubtedly still is and always will be a lot of modern art I either do not (want to) "get" or that I find pretentious or too conceptual, there are also countless examples of artists I wouldn't have liked ten or fifteen years ago that are now among my favourites. I have grown to love Twombly's lyrical and beautiful work, the painterly feel of it and the childlike scribbles. (I also think children are amazing artists and that it is the mark of a great artist to retain the immediacy and expression of children's art.)

So I want to take back all the dismissive comments I may have made about Twombly's art in my younger years. 

If I could I would go to the UK this autumn for this exhibition, which juxtaposes him with Turner and Monet:

 

And I would go to see this Munch exhibition as well:

Insomniac

I am functioning on very little sleep at the moment; it takes me forever to get to sleep and then I wake again before 5am. Since I usually tend to sleep too much, it certainly makes for a change I need to get used to. The first morning I swam 1.6km on two hours' sleep and felt incredibly light and energetic, but by day 2 I could hardly walk up the stairs in the library.

Today I had to stand on a step ladder to hang my work (not high at all, of course, but I always feel a bit queasy on ladders at the best of times, and fiddling with the backs of paintings, cords and hooks makes you lose your balance more easily) and was exhausted afterwards. These paintings are part of a group exhibition in this festival. I will add photos of the individual paintings to my website soon, and maybe post them here as well.

It may look like a random selection, but they are sort of linked and might even tell a story. They are part of my female archetypes series, which seems to remain the main theme in my paintings for now.

More paintings

"...The paintings shown here form part of a series that employs female archetypes and fairy tale motifs in the context of the narrative of a life, its transformations and the multiple selves that inhabit it." (from my artist statement. I never know what to write...)
"...Estos cuadros forman parte de una serie que emplea arquetipos femeninos y motivos de cuentos de hadas en el contexto de la narrativa de una vida, sus transformaciones y las varias identidades que la viven." (una traducción mala de lo que escribí para la exposición)

The Return
La vuelta

The Awakening
El despertar

Milk (based on this drawing)

Leche (basado en este dibujo)

I am back to work (full-time for the next few weeks), and it feels good. It's true that we use our time much more wisely when we don't have a lot of spare time and when the day has some structure to it. It is half past seven, and I am not tired yet (a huge achievement for me)!
I haven't done any more painting since the exhibition (have run out of canvasses, too), but I am looking forward to doing some more for this particular series.

He vuelto al trabajo (de jornada completa de momento), y me siento bien. Es verdad que solemos utilizar nuestro tiempo mejor cuando no tenemos mucho tiempo libre y cuando el día está estructurado un poco.
No he pintado nada desde ls exposición (tengo que comprar lienzos también), pero tengo ganas de pintar más para esta serie.

Exhibition and Gratitude

My body seems to have crashed. After being sick for over two weeks and a course of antibiotics I am now sporting a cold sore on my upper lip. Boo! Bad timing, as I have events to attend, which I will now have to cancel.
At least I was able to make our exhibition opening on Sunday (am exhibiting with a good friend of mine).
Después de estar enferma por más de dos semanas y tomar antibióticos, ahora tengo una calentura en la boca. El momento no es oportuno, ya que tengo que asistir a ciertos eventos, que ahora tendré que cancelar.
Por lo menos pude ir a la inauguración de nuestra exposición.
Here are two of the paintings:
Aquí están dos de mis cuadros:

The Seed
La semilla

When I Try To Speak
Cuando intento hablar

I may have taken these pictures when the paintings weren't finished yet (note to self: take pictures of the finished pieces).
Creo que saqué estas fotos cuando los cuadros no estaban terminados. Tendré que sacarlas otra vez.

I have to admit, I was feeling sorry for myself this morning (WHY ME? WHY NOW?), but it is important to keep things in perspective. A cold sore is annoying, but not life-threatening. Maybe my body is trying to tell me something, to slow down, to work on my anxiety problem, which seems to be the cause of my being sick so often.
And now I already feel much better (after talking to my little sister, who is far more sensible than I am-THANK YOU!).
Tengo que admitir que me lamentaba de mi suerte esta mañana (Por qué yo? Por qué ahora?), pero es importante no perder la perspectiva. Una calentura es molesta, pero no es nada grave. Quizás mi cuerpo trate de decirme algo, que tengo que tomarme todo con más calma, atender mi problema con la ansiedad que es causa de muchas de mis enfermedades.
Y ahora ya me siento mejor (después de hablar por teléfono con mi hermana menor, quien es mucho más sensata que yo -GRACIAS!)

So it's a good time to list what I'm grateful for:
-family and friends, always
-that this situation means I have lots of time to think about lots of things (I am being vague, I know!)
-that I managed to exhibit my work despite time pressures and being sick
-that for the first time in quite a while I am close to being and feeling organised
-my friend S, who in this age of digital photos takes the time to print out her pictures, get several copies and give them to the people who are in it (and who brought me food when I was sick)
-...and much more!

Así que esta es buena oportunidad para estar agradecida por las cosas buenas:
-mi familia y amigos, siempre
-esta situación significa que tengo mucho tiempo para pensar en muchas cosas (muy impreciso, lo sé)
-logré a exponer mis cuadros, aunque estaba enferma y no tenía mucho tiempo
-por la primera vez desde hace mucho tiempo estoy bien organizada
-mi amiga S, quien, en este tiempo de fotos digitales, imprime fotos y hace copias multiples para darlas a las personas que están en la foto (y me trajo comida cuando estaba enferma)
-...y mucho más!

Exhibition opening

It was our exhibition opening last night (it's a two-person show; I feel honoured to be exhibiting alongside a seriously gifted and lovely woman, whose work and general wonderfulness I would like to direct you to, but I want to obtain her permission first, and I can only do that once I tell the people in my life about this blog...which I still feel a bit uneasy about).
I feel immensely grateful that I was given the opportunity to have this exhibition and that so many people came to the opening, and for the beautiful speech and people's lovely comments.
There have been countless times in the past few years when I wanted to give up and felt I couldn't do it (because I wasn't doing it, basically). I have also struggled with low self-esteem and anxiety, and a lot of the time I just wanted to hide somewhere. So last night was a big thing for me. I didn't drink -in the past I would often need alcohol to get through a social event, which means that I only have a vague and blurry recollection of two of my exhibitions and always cringe when I think back (as I do now).
Anyway. I was quite nervous, and when I get nervous I start babbling and get giddy, so I probably appeared drunk...
I cannot get over the fact that people actually wanted to buy my work (I really cannot believe it; to one of them I said, "Are you sure??!" -not very professional, I know..). This means so much to me.
It is my intention to focus on the good things in my life instead of worrying, stressing and complaining, and I realise there are so many things to be grateful for right now :).

P.S.: I'm the girl with the green coat and purple tights in the photo.