Bread and Butter - Etsy Shop

My Etsy shop,  Bread and Butter, is now up and running.

Just a few prints up for sale at the moment; hopefully I will be adding bowls and such as time goes on.

It will be open until the end of April, then will be taking a break so get your orders in! 
I appreciate any shares either via social media or word of mouth! Every little helps.

You can visit the shop by following the link below;

Visit Bread and Butter Shop

L'amour et le Sexe

I am constantly going through the newspapers, looking for interesting tid-bits. Headlines and block quotes, especially unusual, amusing and odd ones pop out all the time and I have a small pile of them awaiting to be used in a piece of work. Above is a quote I got from a magazine, it has been digitally combined and altered with an image from a book page I bought for the image on the reverse side.

I really must get back into screen printing, this would make a great screen print, feel very guilty for having a screen I have never used. Will have to take a refresher course tho as I am so out of touch.

It worries me, the inconsistencies in my work, especially when looking at other artists such as Louise Bourgeois, and Tracey Emin. Their work bears a unique fingerprint that is recognisable throughout their careers no matter what medium they work with. I feel my own work lacks consistency that much of it could be done by different people. Maybe I am wrong but I fear that this will go against me in the future, and I will be over looked in the art world. Perhaps I get bored to easily or I have not found a style that I can stick to and repeat  which so many artists of my generation seem to do. 

The themes in my work, love, home, nature, etc, are consistent just not the style.

I hope I am wrong and these things that worry me, are actually a positive that make my work that bit unique and interesting; I just want to do and make everything in every way I can.

A Little Poultry Market

Knocked off a few shots while at a little poultry market on Sunday, next time I will take more. Came away with two little ducklings so am happy out!

What the Cat Dragged In...

This week.. rodents.

Ode to a Cat

Last week I had to say good bye to my beloved cat Bw after her long battle with respiratory illnesses.

Bw was my first friend and companion after moving back to Ireland. We took her in after she got sick and needed tlc, a former yard cat, our fates were sealed when after bringing her home I placed her on my bed and she immediately weed on it, a result of a long journey from the vets and nervousness. Hence the name B.W, Bed Wetter, or as my father nicknamed her, Bloody Wicked. 

Wicked she was not, one of the most loving creatures I have come across. When I spent a year shut away painting and preparing for my first solo exhibit she kept me company, always watching me, looking for attention and tearing up papers.

She was always around, would go for walks, keep me company in the studio, and would greet me when I came home. 

She would not and could not be ignored.

In this post I have attached many images of photos, prints, sketches, sewing, and even a polaroid, in no particular order, featuring BW; she has cropped up many times over the years in my work and notebooks.

In my art I work with what I love, it comes from me, I loved BW and she appears directly and indirectly in various projects.

I find lately that art has become very disconnected, it is so minimal and cold. Sometimes I feel artists have lost  touch with their selves, they are so concerned with the big idea, the political, making a point, loosing heart and the everyday audience.

Maybe we all need to go back to basics, every once and awhile and touch base with what is around us, what we love, and what made us, then maybe the aloof abstract ideas will be stronger and our hearts a little lighter.

Feminine Nature- Sacred Objects

'Untitled,' Wood, gold leaf, and gold tin foil

'Untitled,' Wood, faux pearls

'Untitled,' Wood, gold leaf

'Untitled,' Burnt Wood, Gold leaf

Notes:

My little studio room is filled with bits of wood, logs, branches that I have rescued from the wood pile or have picked up from the garden. It is usually the shapes, deformities and colours that catch my eye.
These are funny little pieces, difficult to write about although it is all in my head, its just trying to get it down in a way that makes sense, probably best to write it in bullet points.
female body+nature=life

• The above pieces incorporates nature with the female body. 
• Alternative primitive statues of venus; the fat little fertility statues.
• Metamorphosis and the human body
• A continuation of the Daphne piece I did, view notes and post here
• After reading an interview with Tracey Emin, I like what she said about nature and the human body when she was describing her figure studies;                                                                          That they are not sexual but are coming from nature, if you want to be in nature and thats what you desire, you have to understand that you are nature. She describes the human body as an animal, flesh and blood, that it is nature, organic. It isn't man made it is natural. 

The above pieces have had as little meddling as possible, besides the gold leaf they are as near to as I found them with a few alternatives. The small hanging piece with pearls; I have emphasised its lines and ridges by carving them out with a lino cutter.

• The metamorphosis of sexuality: sublimation.                                                                           The Gods that mortal beauty chase,                                                                                             Still in a tree did end their race.
• The symbolic equation, Girl = Tree
• She is the mother; the Great Mother; the naked goddess rising between two branches
• Metamorphosis into a tree. The sublimation is at the same time a fall, into a lower order of creation; an incarnation. The way up is the way down. The sublime Apollo is desublimated, descends; in love with human nature he takes on human, all-too-human form-the hound of heaven, ut canis in vacuo leporem cum Gallicus arrive-to be united with the virgin. And what she finally gives him is wood, the maternal material. The Virgin is his mother; Osiris, Adonis, born of a tree. In her womb he puts on wood; in her womb he is surrounded with wood, crowned with the laurel, embraced by the Virgin.' (Ovid Metamorphoses I, l. 533. Ovid Moralise I, ll. 3245-3250)
• -Metamorphosis into a tree. A fall, into the state of nature. The spirit, the human essence, hides, buried in the natural object; "projected."(Schiller, "Die Gotter Griechenlands.")

Many of these notes, although relevant have been repeated from the Daphne post.

What the Cat Dragged In

I love my little birds and I love my cats, unfortunately they do not love each other, and is a relationship doomed for tragedy.
Sadly the cats bring birds and various rodents in the house for a bitter end, leaving them where I will find them, or step on whats left.
Of course this is all part of nature and there is not much one can do to change it; but one can take advantage of the situation.
Perhaps there is a new photo project in store, we shall see what else gets dragged in through the cat flap. Here are some photos of two of the cats latest victims.

Brie

'Brie,' 2016, Acrylic on round canvas

A birthday present for my fathers 70th birthday. It is of his sweet terrier, Brie. Difficult one to do, because of the angle of the photo and because of the lack of colour, also was on a short deadline. It came out pretty good. I some-what purposely didn't take a photo of the drawing stage as there was about 4 drawings, on the one canvas and were all just terrible I didn't want to immortalise them in a photo, so it is just the underpainting and finished product.