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Dotty

Matcha tea ceremony

Some fiction highlights from last year

Sideboard still life

Work-in-progress: John and Cillian

"She walks back, more slowly, the way she came. How odd it feels, to move along the same streets, the route in reverse, like inking over old words, her feet the quill, going back over work, rewriting, erasing. Partings are strange." O'Farrell, Maggie: Hamnet, Tinder Press, London 2020, p.214

 

|  I like to knit all year round, but often abandon it during the summer months. At the end of the year, while on an unplanned break from work due to a health complication (neither cancer-related nor COVID), I picked up my knitting needles again and have been knitting every day since. It can be addictive, and even though I am a morning person, I can see how my sister is able to stay up past midnight while working on a project. You don't notice the time going by, and the movement of your hands keeps you alert, albeit in a lulled, relaxed way.

|  I had been drinking matcha tea for years and John never showed any interest, until one of his favourite podcasts dedicated an episode to it, which prompted him to order a matcha tea set and introduce a weekly ritual.

|  Books are my weakness when it comes to acquiring things (outside of lockdowns I also use the library a lot) - even though there must be dozens of books in the house that I haven't read yet, I keep getting more. I always have several books on the go and make sure at least one of them is fiction, and I exchange books with friends and family and often pass on novels when I am finished with them.

|  Apart from the books that are scattered everywhere, I lean towards minimalism and try to limit clutter (of course everyone has a different interpretation of what constitutes clutter, and the definitions of minimalism are equally varied), but I do get aesthetic satisfaction from the objects surrounding us, including the jars of fermenting kale that are currently fizzing away on the sideboard (not pictured). The Irish Times recently featured Kopper Kreation, a Dublin brand that makes homeware out of reclaimed and recycled materials, and John bought a copper pipe candelabra. It has been brightening up our dinners.

|  A couple of weeks ago, when my energy had returned, I gave my little studio some TLC and am now back in there for hours every day, preparing videos for my art classes, finishing commissions, working on illustrations, and getting started on a new series of personal paintings on wooden boards - as much as I love the texture of canvas, I want to experiment with smooth surfaces.

Portraits

I have been painting and drawing a lot of people and animals, especially portraits of family and friends. If anyone is interested, I posted some work-in-progress photos of two of the paintings above on my long-neglected art blog (though the plan is to merge the two blogs in an effort to simplify). At one point I had all my nephews keeping me company in the studio, albeit in 2-D!

While I sometimes have people sit for me, the examples shown here were all based on photographs and screenshots of paused videos - the latter works very well, as I can choose the 'pose' from a much wider range. I tend to start out with a very rough sketch and let the face emerge gradually.

In Enda's portrait (third picture above - when he was one year old and pre-haircut, for those who know him only with short hair) he is wearing a soft knitted top my sister had made for him that is tied at the back with a ribbon. I loved painting the stocking stitch and the ribbon and the light in his hair. With Henry (fourth picture) it was the oval of the snap fastener on his little shoulder that caught my attention - sometimes it is those small details that I find particularly poignant.

Flowers

From Lindgren, Astrid & Hartung, Louise: Ich habe auch gelebt. Briefe einer Freundschaft, Ullstein Verlag, Berlin 2016

I have been filling a sketchbook with botanical illustrations, experimenting with different styles, though most of them are quite realistic. I adore both the highly detailed botanical drawings of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries and more stylised modern interpretations and am not sure where to go with mine, but enjoying the ride.

The ones in my sketchbook are all done with watersoluble coloured pencils. I only started rendering flowers in oils and acrylics as the main subject of a painting in recent years. Art history is filled with stunning examples of floral art, and they are hugely popular as a theme, yet for some reason I had only ever used them as part of a composition and rarely let them take centre stage.

I love Georgia O'Keeffe's big and bold sculptural paintings of flowers opening and blossoming. And cut-paper flowers and of course the real thing, fresh and ephemeral or preserved: For my birthday my nephew gave me a card with pressed flowers (which I will frame) and a beautiful necklace containing a daisy (and my sister's card was her own gorgeous botanical drawing). I've been revisiting The Paper Garden with Mary Delany's intricate botanical collages created with scissors and coloured paper and thinking about the lovely gesture of adding flowers to diaries and letters. Throughout their correspondence Louise Hartung would send Astrid Lindgren flowers in the form of bouquets and bulbs or pressed and attached to paper.

Since Christmas we've had two different amaryllises indoors, red and pink. Ever since my older sister pointed it out, I like to think of it as the plant of the three Wild sisters - my sisters' names are Anke and Sibylle, so bits of our three names are included in Amaryllis, in chronological order (I'm the middle child...).

The red variety, as so many red flowers, is a symbol of love, but in Victorian times, the amaryllis was associated with pride (which was seen as a good attribute, denoting beauty and strength) and in China the red amaryllis signifies luck. A pink amaryllis is a friendship symbol and I have been drawing it on cards. All varieties represent hope as well. Our two specimens brightened up our rooms in the darker months before the garden came into its own.

Drawing | Book without words

This week I redrew all the images for the book about my nephew and Branwell the cat in 0.1 fineliner on larger sheets of paper. This will be a book without words, and I am keeping it quite minimalist, using the black-and-white of Branwell as inspiration.

I have also started work on two new books and am wrapping up another one, all with an eye on the end of the year, although that is of course a completely arbitrary deadline.

Meanwhile my share of garden tasks has been woefully neglected, even though the workload is much smaller at this time of the year. I can appreciate the beauty in the austerity of a winter garden and the cycle of life, and at times I manage a Buddhist equanimity about the pointlessness of human endeavour, but part of me is sad to see so much of the effort we put into the garden torn out or disappear, and I feel exhausted at the thought of having to start all over again.

This year I have shed several things - responsibilities, some part-time work, hobbies - that were taking up time, in order to prioritise my work and the people in my life, but nothing is set in stone. One of the pastimes I gave up is knitting and crocheting, but now, with the darker evenings, and inspired by a book my sister gave us, I want to start the large-scale, no-thinking-required project I have been meaning to make, a moss-stitch blanket. I just haven't found the right type of yarn yet (knowing my taste for luxury wool, this blanket will end up costing me an arm and a leg!).

Bubbles, chickens, cider

Blowing bubbles - sketch of my nephews

A summer holiday visiting our family tends to come with good weather and thus involves a lot of outdoor pursuits for my nephews, including playgrounds, the inflatable pool and swing in my mom's garden, blowing bubbles, listening to the church bells (much more active than it may seem) and visiting chickens.

We are thinking of getting chickens, so we were interested to see how my mom's neighbours keep theirs, and how they deter rats (supervised feeding of small quantities. There are more elaborate methods, for example a self-service pedal-operated feeder). We got a box of fresh eggs, a cucumber and a fennel bulb from the garden, and my nephew was given a sunflower for my sister.

This year my mom is successfully growing tomatoes out in the open, whereas our plants didn't take off, despite our polytunnel. But the potato yield has been high, and we regularly have meals with three or four different types of produce we have grown ourselves, which is immensely satisfying, though I cannot take much credit for it. Last year we contributed a few boxes of apples towards a local cider-making project, and this summer a few bottles of the result appeared on our doorstep.

Three

1. A recent commission for a concert hall that has been renamed after this lady (they kindly gave me a photo-op backdrop banner with my drawing on it). Apparently no photos of her as an adult exist bar one small photograph in a newspaper article, hence the request for a portrait based on that image.

2. Evening light in the studio and the beginning of the 'layout wall' for a new book, a collaboration with John. The studio is one of the colder rooms in the house, and many times during the winter I would move my work to the kitchen table, but in the last few weeks it has become the space I spend most of my time. I have been working in and on the studio (the walls still need painting, but it is much more homely now) - more on this soon.

3. My cousin made the envelope for a wedding card out of this, and I put it in a frame, as I love the sentiment the title evokes and it is a beautiful piece of music. In my head it is a synonym for 'Kinderspiel', the figurative meaning of which is 'piece of cake'. Along with my tiny Laughing Buddha and other pieces it serves as a reminder to lighten up and not take life so seriously - a good word to look at when heading out the door.

Festival artwork | Victorian bathing machine

 

It feels good to return to my normal routine after weeks of working for a festival. I spent yesterday morning in a cleaning frenzy - I had missed domestic chores when my only time at home over the last few weeks was occupied by sleep. Some people thrive on working for events and being surrounded by people and getting home late, but I am not one of them, although I do enjoy all the design work.

This year I also ended up doing the festival artwork again. I didn't even know what a Victorian bathing machine was five months ago.

I created two versions - one in coloured pencils, placed on a flat background, which I used for the invites and for the web, and one in acrylics for the posters and the programmes.

Now that all the stress (a word I swore I would not use anymore but that left my lips at least once per day) has fallen away, I look forward to following my Victorian lady's lead and immersing myself in the water of the local hotel swimming pool, courtesy of John, who got me a voucher, and soon the beckoning sea. 

Daily drawing | Cottage

This is not our house, though we had viewed a couple of old cottages and were tempted (I was living in a small house myself at the time). We realised quickly that we wouldn't be able to cohabit in one without killing each other, so instead we have a house that lacks charm on the outside, but has a studio and space for not just us, but family and friends, and we have had so many visitors, it was the right choice.

This is a sketch of a house we pass on one of our walks. Postcard-pretty scenes abound around here.

Speaking of walks, John asked his wider family to submit three songs each for a compilation of 'chill-out music' for the unstable times we are living in, and it has been a great way of discovering new music. I love the simplicity of this song (John's aunt's choice) about a summer walk, and it captures the whole spirit of this project, putting aside one's worries for a while. It was written for the songwriter's children, and I have listened to it countless times already and play it in my art classes.

Other recent discoveries include watching Hitchcock's Vertigo for the first time, courtesy of my brother-in-law, and being blown away by the sumptuous use of colour, the sheer abundance of mesmerising scenes and the many possible ways of interpreting it. And I have made an oft-repeated pledge to peruse our own library before buying more books and am reading The Shipping News. I am also re-reading Art & Fear, an invaluable book a friend gave me years ago, a compassionate and passionate plea for artists to make their own work without worrying about the audience and use their own material, their own time and place. Like a summer walk with your kids.

New year newness

Tim Lott's column in the Family section of the Guardian last week started with a sobering, though not surprising, observation - according to surveys of New Year resolutions, what people care about is themselves (apart from seeing more of friends and family, the top five concern me, me, me). Now there certainly is some truth in the belief that in order to a better person, we need to look after ourselves first, but it is still depressing (and I am aware I am writing this on a personal blog, which is part of the whole navel-gazing, self-improvement culture we live in). 

I haven't thought up any resolutions, but John set a good template, which consists of three SMART ones (lifestyle, creative and giving back) and one 'fluffy' one (i.e. vague and therefore probably hardest to do), and at least three of them have the potential to include the wider world. I need to think about mine.

The only 'newness' I have incorporated into this brand new year so far is cleaning the fridge, getting rid of paper (the only household chores I have felt fit enough for, as I have the flu), buying new music and starting a new sketchbook. Being sick has meant the luxury of listening to several Desert Island Discs episodes in a row and reading for hours. The programme had me in  tears several times, from George Michael's answer to why he was in a relatively good place (it was recorded in 2007) - "Nobody died on me...in years...it took years for me to believe that these blows weren't gonna keep coming" - to Emma Bridgewater talking about her mother's death, and in general just the sheer humanity pouring out of the guests (I loved Mary Robinson's episode).

It is of course an excellent source for finding or rediscovering songs (and books), and I have been listening to Rufus Wainwright's "Going to a Town" about the Bush administration (very timely again this month), one of George Michael's choices and a song he would later cover.

Going through a pile of cuttings, I ended up looking up different singers, which eventually led me to this heartbreaking video (more on the song and animation here), which includes drawings made by refugee and displaced children supported by CARITAS - all net proceeds from sales of the single go to Australia's ASRC (Asylum Seekers Resource Centre).

My sister knows me well and got me a sketchbook that is asking me to sketch every day, and I have a feeling that with this one, I will. My first sketch is of our small armchair by the stove in the kitchen, with the blanket my sister and brother-in-law gave us for Christmas last year and a cushion knitted by John's late grandmother, which is the object he chose from her house. 

Sketchbook | Baby and cat

While I really need to dedicate time to finishing a collaborative project, I have been sketching ideas for my first solo book project (if it all goes to plan - it's very early stages). In fact, this will most likely be a book without words, so there is no writing for me to do.

It is the story of the special bond between my nephew and Branwell the cat from their initial mutual wariness to the games they play together and their shared adventures. 

My sister (a pencil version of her is in the first picture above) has started a blog, which I am very excited about. She creates the most amazing things (see also our Etsy shop) and now has a place where she can document and share them, as well as writing about her life with her little family in rural Ireland and her love of books.

I am looking forward to my first free weekend in a while, to new books (borrowed from my sister - this one, a sequel to Rebecca, since I am in a Du Maurier mood) and maybe a half-day trip. And to time in the studio - I have been getting a few commissions, and there is nothing like a deadline to focus you, so I am in the zone, and everything in the studio feels warm and active instead of stale and dead. All the tubes of paint are handled, pencils sharpened; the candle and oil burner are on rotation, and drawers get pulled out and easels adjusted. It is funny how using objects makes them come alive. I can see certain people rolling their eyes, but there is a lot of wisdom in Feng Shui.

Drawing | Joan the dog on Barna Pier

Between visitors, housework, the garden and dogsitting it has been too busy (in a good way) to make time for art, or so I thought. But then I snatched 15 minutes yesterday evening to draw a scene we witnessed a few weeks ago on Barna Pier - a man and his dog looking at the water. We spoke to the man briefly and learned that the dog's name was Joan. She must be the first canine Joan I have met.

Sketchbook | Emil

Sketch of Emil, winter afternoon sunlight

Some time ago on this blog I started and then quickly abandoned a regular series called 'Daily Drawings', in which I was going to post one or several of my daily drawings (or paintings) once a week - it was never going to be an actual 'daily' thing... Then my posting became sporadic.

It is easy to make announcements of fresh starts, especially at this time of the year. I am sitting here with a new diary and a new notebook, hundreds of blank pages with the promise of plans put into being, ideas realised and wishes fulfilled. My 2015 diary and its pages of densely written appointments and events (an estimated 10%), deadlines (20%) and random notes to self (70%) are in the recycling - not the fire this time.

I am hoping to post more regularly again, and this series shall be under the plain and more open and realistic title 'Sketchbook', though I have high hopes that I will sketch and paint every day. There will be some housekeeping going on here for the next few days (or weeks).

This is a drawing of my four-month-old nephew. More and more I feel the need to draw and paint people and things from my life. And I am encouraged by the feedback from others, including strangers. In the August exhibition the painting people commented on most was of my sister and her cat, the most personal piece in a lot of ways.

Happy Home

 Bought pumpkin pie. Almost as good as the homemade pie my sister gave us (no photo evidence of the latter).

 The Nicholas Mosse ceramics were a housewarming gift.

 

Little visitor

Our favourite card, made by the most adorable (and  perceptive) girl.

 Love the details (my palette and brush, John's stubble)

After a bit of a hiatus (that began when I started teaching again and may have also been triggered by the lukewarm reception I got for one of my DIY jobs...only joking - that was pure coincidence) we are making progress with the house. I was going to post some before and after pictures, but realised that I seem to have the dubious ability to make the after pictures look worse than the before, mainly due to light: All the befores are drenched in sunlight and the afters are taken at the end of the day, in artificial light, and look gloomy as a result. But they are coming.

We are still living in two rooms, and everything takes longer than we thought, but we knew that would happen, and it makes sense to take it slowly and not end up with panic purchases and all the wrong colours. It is such an exciting project. In the meantime we are making this our home with what we have and somehow don't even see eyesores such as the gas boiler anymore. It is also very much possible to get used to a chocolate 1980s bathroom suite.

We have had a good few visitors, with a good few kiddies on what we call the kiddies' bench (that we use a lot ourselves. I never had a bench before; it is now one of my favourite things in our house). We are finishing a jigsaw that four smaller hand were working on this afternoon. In the years I lived on my own I never thought of getting a jgsaw, even though it was something I loved as a child. I am so grateful for the constant surprises and ties to the past that cohabitation brings.

Pencil and paint

 Mounted drawings

 Mini-in-progress

Sketch for illustration

This has got to be the most productive phase of my life to date, and long may it continue. Though I realise there will be pauses and blocks, and they need to happen. Once I have figured out what has brought on this change from being an expert procrastinator to actually 'getting my stuff done', I'll share it here.

Preparation used to be almost counter-productive for me, a key part of the process that ended up being the only thing I would do for weeks (though the lines between preparation and the 'actual' work are of course often blurred). I would spend so much time preparing, organising and imagining and then wonder why I had nothing to show for all my 'hard work'.

A few weeks ago I ordered a lot of mounts (from a wonderful Irish company), intended for future prints of my paintings. I proceeded to store them under the spare bed, and then worried about them because a) I am a big believer in keeping the space under the bed empty, and b) mounts are fragile and Irish houses are damp. I would take one mount out to use it and try to wrap the rest in a way that would keep them dry and not damage the corners. Then I moved them to some thin drawers, which is a much better home for them.

And then I thought of all the original drawings I have and decided to start using all the mounts now rather than wait for the prints. Five of the original Jumbo drawings are now mounted and available for sale in our Etsy shop. It feels good to move from a preparatory state to action.

The mini paintings of Irish scenes have proven quite popular, especially the Long Walk one, and I finally bought some more 10x10cm canvases and work on them when taking a break from the large works-in-progress. I do a different underpainting each time and change the colours a bit, and they are never exactly the same as previous ones.

The illustrations for the book I have been working on since the autumn are nearly finished - one more double-spread to go, and of course that final scene is the most daunting.

With this newfound energy and productivity I hope to get back to posting here more often, and not just updates about my work...

Jumbo's second adventure

Happy New Year everyone!

Excuse the bad light in the photos - January has kicked off with dull skies.

The second Jumbo adventure, Jumbo Discovers Giraffeland, is out now! Written by Lionel Gallagher, illustrated by me, and with design and layout by Conor Gallagher.

I posted a little preview recently. And this is the first story.

For more details, please contact me or visit my website. Thank you!