Until I let them go, I didn't realise I was holding on . . . .

Nude in Repose, charcoal on paper

Until I let them go, I didn't realise I was holding on to what I considered 'precious pieces'. And now, I am glad to say, that they are precious to some of you, too. Thank you all for your warm and generous response to my experimental first Virtual Open Studio. The opening time of this Virtual Exhibition has been extended because of Covid Lockdown. In Ireland this country is in the highest level of alert and restrictions so as long as it lasts, you can enjoy my virtual studio visit. 

 The Hidden Gems were precious to me for a variety of reasons . . . the portraits and life drawings reveal what a little piece of charcoal. . . combined with a sheet of paper, a putty rubber (and endless hours of effort) can do. Even though I had done life drawing in art college, and I could see my all fellow students manipulating, rubbing and and pulsing the eraser in their non-dominant hand, I never really knew why. I thought it was some kind of nervous tick that enveloped everybody (except me) when they started to draw from life. What they were doing with the eraser was making it malleable and soft and and when it is soft it is the most perfect tool for doing the most delicate work. 

 It has been a busy time, wrapping and posting off paintings to far flung places from California to Ballina, Thurles to New South Wales. In between times I cut my own hair, and signed some paintings. What paintings were left, I stacked unwrapped in the back of my car and delivered myself. This was after I reckoned it was easier to do this than queuing outside the post office (in the rain). Delivering them myself was a pleasure. Some of you said it looked better in reality, than online. Many of you who bought had bought previously from me, and you told me how much you loved that painting and how much it has been cherished. 

So many gave me gifts of honey and jam, poetry and pottery. Here is a link to the poem that Brendan printed for me Margaret told me how much she loved my painting of Wexford. After more than 10 years …she still sits gazing at it. It seems I was close to the mark in my video when I promised that good a painting is a companion for lifetime. She told me that in particular, she loves that all my work is so different, and that she reckons I am "a real artist" that many artists churn out the same painting over and over again but mine all so different. 

 I have to admit that I have felt a bit challenged by my wide and varied interest in different materials and methods of applying paint over the years. What I am learning after all this time is that that it's okay. Margaret says it is better than okay. That it is, in her view, actually a good thing. She says she knows it's not a popular move for an artist, but for real, live, breathing human being - changing, evolving and doing things differently is normal, and anything else is frankly a bit strange (even if it is better for an artist’s bank balance). If you are interested, we can take up this subject, and many others (like the obsession with signing a painting), on Zoom,m please sign up for my newsletter

On Missing You

As I start to write this it is Sunday morning and not yet bright. I'm full of ideas, resolve and determination as I put the kettle on, illuminating my kitchen with an unearthly blue light. This unworldly glow allows me to glance at the clock, telling me it's not yet 5 am. Devoted and all as I am to writing these blogs, it has been a while since I've been up this early. The clock is wrong. It must have stopped, because I know that it is coming up to 7 am. I turn on the radio to hear the news. As I drink my tea and listen in the predawn light, I see the geese in the field. And I recall over two years ago trying to look forward to November 2020, and writing that the cackling of the geese made me think then that by now, 2020, the geese would know that the world is ending. 

As I continue to write I get distracted because my mouse won’t behave properly. It takes me ages to realise that the mouse mat is moving with the mouse because it is enabled by the pile of papers that are strewn across my desk. I am so proud of these piles. I recently did all my accounts. It has been haunting me for many months. . . Ever since I completed them the last time I promised myself never again. Never again would I abandon this task of crunching numbers and the multitude of spiked invoices and receipts… As you know I have a talent for complicating things. Anyway that job is done now and it's time to move on to the next difficult task. Nothing is easy or effortless anymore. 

This next task has been causing me a lot of thinking without resolution. This is unusual for me. As you know, I am usually full of good ideas. I think, in truth, I must be missing you. At this time of year I can usually look forward to my traditional open studio, some good company, mulled wine (warmed cranberry juice for the drivers) and a general sense of the year coming to an end and a job well done. This year of course, is nothing like that. There's been nothing but Covid and Chaos. The studio remains unfinished. I am unreasonably hopeful that it will be finished by Christmas. Despite the lack of finish (I have no electricity yet), I have moved in. The big new windows are fabulous and provide a lot of steady northern light. The floor is freezing and as I potter around in the November frost, my feet want to fall off. 

However, all is well. It was a terrible job moving back in. I saw my life flash before me, All these paintings, frames and ‘substrates’ (a fancy catch all for surfaces I paint on). There are many paintings that were finished and forgotten. And frames. I have tonnes of frames that don't fit paintings and lots of paintings without frames. Of these many are portraits and I have endless charcoal drawings of naked men and women. Some of these I shredded. I kept some. Mostly because I remember the thrill of discovery. I even have a charcoal drawing of the foot of a Roman or Greek statute that I laboured over for so long, I had to frame it afterwards because I wanted to remember how impossible it seemed when I started and how the process of drawing is one that is frankly a mechanical skill and one that can be learned. 

I discovered many beautiful paintings that never found their way out into the world. The first bit of light they saw was when they had to be moved out of my old studio, carefully carted over to fill my house for the last nine months, only to be carefully carried back and to be stacked again. Each one is special because as a painter for me the joy is in the moment of painting and once that is finished and it gets stacked away to dry, sometimes as the moment passes, it gets left there, perhaps forever unloved, unseen, maybe forgotten. It is quite a sight and very challenging. 

The question for me now is how can I live with knowing that they are there? The traditional way to deal with this is to have a studio sale. I am trying to cook up an idea that would allow me to offer them to you and re-create the feeling of the open studio in a virtual world. I cannot quite get it right in my head. I have all kinds of complicated notions involving Zoom and virtual exhibitions that would probably take me until next Christmas to make real . . . And perhaps you are not interested in anything more complicated than an email? 

I don't think I ever asked you to buy a painting from me in the decade I have been writing this blog, so this feels a bit strange to me, would you be interested and willing to buy a painting before the end of this year? I curious to know if there are any people interested in an online event to make up for my lack of an Open Studio this peculiar year. Before I got down the rabbit hole of creating a hidden gallery and all the work involving numbers that entails ;-) If you have read this far, thank you. Please answer my question by simply replying to me below. For now, for me, it's time for breakfast,

Hanging Myself at the Annual Exhibition of the Royal Irish Academy

This weekend, my self-portrait

has been selected for the Royal Hibernian Academy Summer Exhibition and that will run from May 25th right through the summer until early August.