Christmas Watercolours

Working on some vintage inspired wintery watercolours on marbled paper, getting ready for local Christmas craft fairs and some new craft ideas.

Detail of winter forest animals watercolour

Christmas tree painted on marbled paper

New Ceramic Frames Work in Progress

Making some ceramic frames, I will be firing these next week and then hand painting them, then resin setting art prints in the centre. Looking forward to see how these will look, hoping to have some of these new pieces done for my stall at this years Winter Market at the Dock in Carrick-on-Shannon on the 3rd and 4th of December. Stay tuned for more progress photos of these.

New Resin work

New resin work on these decoden pendant backs the front of these has a tiny print of my art set into clear glittery resin, having fun with these. Hoping to have these new jewellery pieces ready for the Winter Market at the Dock in carrick-on-shannon, Co. Leitrim this 3rd-4th of December where I will be hosting a stall of my recent arts and crafts ✂🎨🎄

 

Living Off The Grid in Leitrim

Towards the end of October we had The Irish Times visit our home and studio to do a little lifestyle piece about living off-grid, here is a rare glimpse of my home life here in Co. Leitrim where I live in Ireland with my family. We live off-grid which means we are independent from the electrical power grid and self sufficiently generate all our power.

Life's a Carousel

I have been working on a new body of work titled Life's a Carousel, the theme being carousel animals and the Celtic year representing the main eight Luna festivals the Celtic year beginning with the festival of Samhain more conmanly known as Halloween, which will soon be upon us.

This time of year is the Celtic New Year and is always a time of reflection, looking forward and letting old emotions from the year die away. Symbolically it is often represented by fire as it is traditional to have bonfires at this festival.

The Celtic year is often drawn as a circle divided into eight equal parts. I have always been drawn to the aesthetic of the carousel with its grand and whimsical carved horses and lights I have been wanting to use the theme for a new body of work for some time now, knowing I also wanted each Carousel animal to represent some kind of emotive driven iconography. I have chosen the Celtic year as I feel the two themes will blend well, given the motion of the carousel turning as correlating to the motion of death, regeneration and new birth the wheel of the Celtic year embodies. The scope for an emotive personality in the character and imagery these new works can contain will be my focus exploring the personality of the seasonal festival and its attributes.

I'm currently working on sketches for new paintings exploring ideas and imagery around these themes not all of these will make the cut and much editing will be done before I commit to my final imagery for the new work.

I will be combining the marbled canvas I have been working on as a starting place for this new mixed media work. I like the introduction of this spontaneous element to painting, I feel the marbling imagery brings a fluid and motion to the work which echos a sentiment of pictorial metaphysical narrative spaces.

 Samhain imagery with a goat a witch and her broom.

Imbolc (May-day) imagery represented by frog

 Marbling onto raw un-primed canvas and them coated with clear gesso with fine marble dust, to give a smooth surface with a gritty tooth for working onto.

Experiment with Gouache on Marbled Paper

I recently got a set of gouache paint, I remember using them at school when I was 15, they are very like watercolours only they apply much flatter, perhaps they have more body of pigment.

I was interested to try them out on the marbled paper I have been making and see how they cover the surface. On using them I suddenly felt like the technical possibilities of water colour had increased, they blend smoothly like, and have the coverage of oil paint without the oily sheen, tonally soft unlike watercolour which looks often transparent or inky, I think by combining gouache with watercolour the possibilities for contrast of  texture is elevated with the introduction of areas of true flat powdery colour.

Here is the little experimental piece I did combining the two water based paints.

More Marbling and Watercolour Combinations

I have been very busy in the studio sanding and prepping boards for painting supports, this work has been taking up most of my time so these little works have been a nice break for me from this and also helping me to warm up, before starting my new body of work which I will tell you more about in a few blog posts.

Marbling and Watercolour Combination Pieces

After getting the hang of the marbling I wanted to use the paper I had made to do some small experimental paintings to explore further the combination of the marbled patterns with my imagery, I still processing my findings here as I have just scratched the surface of what can bee done with it, I do feel the marbling is a contrasting random element that has a timeless quality, its watery formations speaks to me of the alchemy of forming matter and I think in my work represents the movement in a metaphysical imaginative space.

Marbling and Acrylic Painting On Wooden Panel

The wooden panels that  I have successfully experimented with so far have been small panels. I found it very difficult to get the larger boards to take a print. I'm not sure exactly why it works on the smaller boards but not on the large ones, more experimentation is needed. 

Here is my first painting and marbling combination, this is acrylic paint marbling on wood panel with acrylic painting on top:

This piece (below) was marbled onto a black gesso ground wooden panel and painted over with acrylic, for both of these small paintings I tried to incorporate the marbling into the structure of the overall composition:

 

Here is a little video of me marbling - in the Studio with the Twisted Oak Arts Collective 

Marbling

Been experimenting with marbling in the studio, first on paper with many messy trials before I managed to get the marbled paints to stick to the paper and take a print, but after lots of trial and error it's working!

I then developed a porous gesso/chalk paint that can be marbled onto that I made by mixing chalk plaster into the paint, this can go onto wood boards and create a absorbent painted surface. 

Marbling on gesso wood panel, still in the experimental stage of this new process for me, I'm dearly getting excited by it and the possibilities of combining it with painting , I have 20 large panels cut, a lot of gesso to make and one huge marbling water tray. I feel excited to be in the studio.

Sketching

 

Little doodle in pencil, kinda hermit faerie will-o-the-wisp.

New Oil Painting - Pisces

Recent oil painting I finished for Shared Dreamscapes an exhibition of new work by The Twisted Oak Arts Collective, now available at the Iníon Veigh, Gallery and Craft Store in Sligo town until April 22nd, It a really beautiful group show, so if you happen to be in or around Sligo don't miss it!
This painting is titled Pisces and is oil on board 16" x 22"