Ballymaloe and Camille Souter

Ballymaloe's Dining Room

I don’t want to sound all smug and conceited here, but recently I was whisked off to the utterly delectable  Ballymaloe Country House Hotel run by the Allen family, for what I feel was a much deserved and long-awaited break.  Yes and Ballymaloe is just ‘right’ in every way, it certainly ticks all my boxes and the food is just ‘simply delicious’. Long live the Allen dynasty.

What I didn’t prepare for though was the sheer delight of seeing so much modern Irish art on the walls, from the exquisite Louis LeBrocquy tapestries hanging in the entrance hall; the hard- edge abstracts of Cecil King and Patrick Scott, to the Michael Farrell’s self-searching prints decking the corridors.  Iconic names such as Nano Reid, Norah McGuiness, Jack Yeats, Mary Swanzy, adorn every alcove, nook and cranny.  This is a personal collection of great insight and empathy with that period of Irish Art history that starts with Nathanial Hone’s  pastoral scenes and ends with Elizabeth Cope’s eye popping red field with sheep.   This is such a strong and obviously much loved and cherished family collection and as a result a very cohesive and concise slice of important Irish art.

If I was to choose a favourite painting from this collection, it would be the understated Camille Souter that is hanging in the sitting room.   This painting is hung between the two large sash windows, a little ‘tongue in cheek’ I feel, as the painting itself depicts a large sash window filling the whole canvas, framing a view of a garden.   Like all Souter’s work it is tonally complex and subtly sophisticated.  I like to feel that she painted this while staying as a guest at Ballymaloe, all molly-coddled and sated, lying in white linen sheets with her hall-mark of a beret firmly placed on the side of her head, and the breakfast  tray with the remnants of a lightly poached egg , jugged kipper, and half- drunk third cup of tea, at her bare feet.   I imagine  her easel is set up conveniently  next to her bedside table and the sprigged floral sanderson curtains are drawn well back to reveal a soft grey-green sort of day, a heavy drizzle has set in, stopping Camille from flinging open the French doors.  She is putting the finishing touches to her Ballymaloe painting, that will be presented to the art loving member of the Allen family later on that day, and yes it is a  view from her bed –and why not, a sash window creates the perfect  framework in which  to suspend her tender brush strokes of abstracted form and delicate colour nuances, in a masterpiece of painterly perfection. 

Camille Souter  Washing by the Canal.

'Walled Garden' summer paintings 2012

cream tea 122x122cm oil on canvas

Walled garden summer collection now available and showing at The Doorway Gallery, Dublin  2 and The Russell Gallery , Putney, London.

It was during the Christmas break that I first conceived of the idea for this painting.  My two daughters back for the holiday and bonding over the kitchen table probably with laptops and coffee between them, where at either side of my long refectory-type table, and I was at the kitchen sink (no comment) looking across directly mid line.  I felt a painting coming on, and jotted down a few quick reminders to work through the idea more fully later.  I have used cream tea as subject matter before, back in 2005, where there were two cream tea still lifes in my solo show at Adam’s in St.Stephan’s Green, Dublin 2.  My aim, in this recent collection of summer paintings, was to make my interior scenes have an outdoor country feel, maybe some deep physiological need for summer during the short dark days of winter……. Crazy really ‘cos we still hav’nt had any decent summer weather yet and its July in a few days!  So I am thinking that in my case my paintings are definately a form of self-medication!

I suppose, in this painting more than in the rest of the ‘Walled Garden” collection, I have used a lot of different fabrics, and it is in these textiles that I have introduced most of the outdoor references.  These have been sourced mainly from 18th century textiles and decorative patterns.  If we think nowadays that we are innovative and edgy with our decorative arts, then think again as 300 years ago, it was as punky and wacky as it gets.  I think all our colour do’s and don’t’s must have happened relatively recently. I have never liked being told what not to do, so I have pheasants, butterflies, flowers and strawberry plants all vying for attention.  Even though I use colour defiantly and boldly go where no man has gone before,  I see them as all balanced and harmonious and to me impart a sense of calmness and well-being. 

18th century fabric book

Walled Garden - New summer paintings

Paolo opening my show

Paolo Tuilio, Irelands much loved food critic and restauranteur, opening my exhibition Rococo at The Doorway Gallery situated in the heart of the main art gallery and museum area of Dublin's city centre. We managed to capture the moment.
Thanks Paolo xxx

Birds Quarrelling



'Falling through the air quarrellling' from a mid-sixteenth century book by Kao Sung



Recently I was talking to Sarah from the Russell Gallery in London, as I am in the process of sending over some paintings for the Chelsea Art Fair in April.  We were talking about one of my bird paintings “Birds Quarrelling” and why that title.  The inspiration for this painting came from what I thought was a very popular  Chinese woodcut of the same title but when I tried to source the image from the internet I found nothing.  After searching through my book shelves I came across the book Heaven and Earth (woodcuts from a Ming Encyclopedia) selected by John Goodall, Lund Humphries 1979, and there it was a little woodcut of two birds “Falling through the air quarrelling”.  So that was where the idea had originated from, though I couldn’t quite remember until now, and the full title is so good on reflection that I wish I had given my version the same one.  Maybe next time I feel inspired to paint quarrelling birds I will.

"Birds Quarrelling' 54x46cm oil on board

I painted the above painting this time last year, for the Rococo exhibition that has just been and gone.  Over the last few months my garden has been full of blackbirds, quarrelling and jostling for position on the lawn, in the hedgerows and for prime position in the stone trough that serves for a great bird bath.  So it seemed right to pit them against a cerulean blue sky, with  blossom from a lovely flowering virburnum fragans which I have growing close by the house and which smells divinely of jasmine; the stage is set the players cast. 





Terre Verte



Madonna and Child  Segna di bonaventura



I feel inspired to write a piece on Terre Verte, which means Green Earth, and it is one of the pigments from the earth colour family of Iron oxides, along with yellow ochre, raw sienna, burnt umber among  many others . I have a special relationship with this thin translucent olive- blue- green paint colour , and I use it a lot in my work to paint faces, arms, legs and I see it as a very natural way to represent flesh.  Maybe it would be good at this point, to bring you in to my world and explain myself. To me, it feels totally natural and traditional  to use this colour when painting flesh and I consider it as the base of all flesh tones.  It was used predominately from the medieval times onwards for painting people; its role was as underpainting  to the more warmer flesh tones, that would have been painted over the top of the terre verte. What had a profound impact on me visually when I was a student, was noting that some of these ancient paintings had all the top flesh tones worn off, leaving completely green faces. This fascinated me, and somehow symbolized a face a lot more coherently than all those polished alabaster like masks.   To me those ancient green portraits  are like living modern images, as real or as inspirational to me, as is a Matisse or a Bonnard painting. 

I know I have taken the role terre verte has in the history of painting flesh and run away with it.  I want to celebrate it, push its barriers and possibilities, in an unapologetic and painterly way. I have used terre verte for many years now, so much so that it is now very much part of my personal painting language.  I suppose this is what is so important to me as a modernist painter; to continually rehash and relive centuries of painting history, so that there is no time divide.  I feel I am exploring a rich world of painting language that’s all around me and now more than ever, so easily accessible. I like to  extract the bits that mean something to me personally and feel ‘right’.  I feel it’s the only way to paint, its like a continuum in the history of the visual arts, that just goes around and around in rich endless different versions of itself. Its what I call living art. 



Secret Garden  122x152cm oil on canvas





Girl with flowers in her hair  61x54cm oil on board



Spotlight on Summer Hat

Summer Hat 71x71cm oil on canvas

I have painted quite a few women in hats now and the Summer Hat which is currently showing at the Battersea Affordable Art Fair is one such painting.






Stella in Flowered Hat   Kees van Dongen NGI



I first conceived the idea for  this composition, when I was in the National Gallery of Ireland looking at the painting Stella by Kees van Dongen which is exhibited alongside  a Bonnard and my favorite favourite painting, Girl with ribbon by Gabriele Munter.   Stella is a sensuous painting with loose expressionistic marks resembling the work of Matisse.  It is highly charged and utterly arresting, with such a dramatic division of the picture plane, top third hat, middle section face, bottom third neck and shoulders.  She reminded me of a vase of flowers, and so inspired, I  painted my first two versions of  girls in hats, one of them was for my Pastoral Collection 2009.



Rococo Rhododendrums 122x92cm oil on canvas



    This time I was inspired by my daughter Becky, who is a manic blogger and had put up a post with herself in this floppy 1970’s inspired straw hat.   The girl’s dress is based on a Chinese vase, to further play on the similarities to one of my flower paintings, the background is a group of silver birch trees that grow near to my house.  I love all the shadows and greens that hats do to faces, it just makes complete sense to me, not that I need any excuse to paint a face green!! But a bit of logic always makes me feel less alone in my eccentricities.



A walk in Avondale 71x71cm oil on canvas and below Walking in Avondale from my Pastoral Collection 2009 71x71cm oil on canvas