Ordered Chaos

This is me in my studio earlier today working on my latest painting......

Working from still life objects in my studio, and composing them into a painting.

Hampstead Affordable Art Fair 2014

Still life with garden produce 71x71cm oil on canvas

Garden Terrace 71x71cm oil on canvas

I will be showing these new paintings Still life with Garden Produce and Garden Terrace as well as work from my recent show Scheherazde  at this year's Affordable Art Fair in Hampstead, London from 11th -15th June 2014, represented by The Doorway Gallery stand H2

Spring is Sprung

Daffodils 2010

Spring is here, screaming its song and steam-rolling its way directly towards summer.  It's turmoil out there: the birds are desperately nest-building, while trying to control their patch, defending it from rivals, predators, high winds and torrential rain storms; and then there is a lull... the sun comes out and its so beautiful - full of promise.  I love this time of year, the earth has been cleared and stands black against the gaudy  colours of the  newly planted  bedding plants.  The grass is beginning to intensify its dense greenness, and the daffodils reign supreme.    Gathered up and crammed into vases, they help to cheer up the dark corners and north -facing windowsills inside the house.  I always find myself painting a vase of daffodils around this time of year, I find them a painting challenge, and they continue to evade me, so I will continue to try and capture in acid yellow, their startling beauty.

Daffodils 2009

Daffodils from my student days 1980

Daffodils in my studio

Daffodils 2013

Daffodils 2012

Recent Daffodil painting

Painting Heroes - Sir Matthew Smith 1879-1959

Matthew Smith Nude, Fitzroy st.  

I can never get enough of Matthew Smith's paintings, and his work is frustratingly under exposed, very rarely will I see a book or postcard or anything that gives this master colourist a mention.
It was way back in 1983 that I made my way over to the Barbican Centre in London to see his major retrospective and it was a wonderful experience and still lives with me today.  It is no surprise to me to find out that this painter spent a short while at the Matisse Art School in Paris, and was very influenced by the Fauvist and Post-Impressionists that were working in Paris before the First-World War.  This painting Nude, Fitroy St. No.1 1916, was obviously painted when he was back in London.

As can be seen by this landscape painted during his war years, how influenced he was by the Irish artist Roderic O'Connor who would have been living and painting in France at the same time that Smith was there.

Favourite things

Matryoshka blue vase

I have been working on a series of flower paintings.  I feel so happy with a vase of flowers set up in front of me in the studio, especially during the dark gloomy days of winter.  I came across some very pretty michelmas daisy-type flowers in my local supermarket, and they had a strange dusty antique quality about them, and created the challenge that I was looking for.  I find working from life stops me from becoming too formulaic in the way I paint, as the permutations are endless when it comes to form and colour, as every leaf and petal presents a new challenge visually. 

Matryoshka daisies

 My paternal grandmother had a lovely flower painting above her fireplace, painted by one of her artist friends(loveday), I inherited it and it was probably one of the first examples of a portrait of flowers that I would have seen as a child. 

loveday flower painting

 I have always loved Dutch still life paintings with their intense observation giving nature centre stage.  I think I re-visited my preconceptions of a vase of flowers when watching a programme on the TV on van Gogh I realized how large and daring some of his sunflower paintings were.  They were certainly standing up on their own in all their glory, unapologetic and beautiful.  As a student my favourite flower painting was Vuillard‘s mantelpiece painting, a busy divine painting about nothing and everything, a time-snatched incidental composition, but so beautiful and spiritual, like a prayer.

Vuillard The Mantelpiece

  There is nothing more complete than painting an inconsequential vase of randomly picked daisies from the garden, it is so simple yet for me defines everything that is important in this world. However Duncan Grant’s Parrot Tulips are far from spiritual they are of this world rich and earthy, exotic and sensual the velvet cloth they stand on is tactile and warm and the whole composition for me is perfection, vibrant and masterful, it was exhibited at the Camden Town exhibition in London 1909.  

Duncan Grant parrot tulips

  
My theme this year is Matryoshka which means Russian Doll, as I am looking at Russian textiles and culture for inspiration, and  these recent flower paintings  will be at the Brussells Affordable Art Fair with The Doorway Gallery this February 2014.

Christmas Show at The Doorway Gallery

my flower paintings going up the stairs

My paintings in the hall at The Doorway Gallery

Deirdre, me and Denise

I dropped by The Doorway Gallery 24 South Frederick St, Dublin 2,
to have a glass of mulled wine and a few tasty mince-pies, and of course a look at their Christmas Show.  It looked so inviting and Christmassy and thats just the outside with wreaths of holly berries and pine cones bedecking the Georgian red front door and railings.  Denise and Deirdre have done a wonderful job of themeing the show by colour, so my paintings were teamed with Bob Lynn's and Karen Wilson's so as you can image they bounced off the wall and looked fantastic together.
I also loved Jock Nichol's small landscape and Christy Keeney's interiors.
Well worth a visit and there is lots more paintings downstairs.
The show goes on until January 30th 2014.

Christy Keeney

Jock Nichol

Scheherazade Sketch-book

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Over my career as a painter, I have built up a considerable collection of  hard-backed black sketch books, I seem to get through two a year. They are strange animals, full of working drawings, ideas, words, poetry and stuck in visual information squirrelled from various sources; to aid inspiration, create moods and document ideas.

When I was a student I found the whole process quite unnatural and I was self-conscious about working in sketch books as if an imaginery critic was looking over my shoulder.  But I got over all that and now I see them objectively.

  Of course they are going to be very personal and consciously naïve by their very nature.  But that is their strength, sketch books are personalized visual diaries, they are the artist’s reference material, full of coded visual information.  They are a means to an end:  hopefully a painting or two!   My sketchbooks are well thumbed, and usually covered in paint, as I often bring them into my studio and prop them up near at hand when I am painting.  They give me clues and annotated instructions and help to guide me, as I compose and paint my pictures.

 

My sketch book is my visual diary, but it is also another vital part of the painting process, so I am posting up a few of my recent sketch book pages that I used when I was painting  my solo exhibition, Scheherazade, which is now showing at The Doorway Gallery, 24 South Fredericks Street, Dublin 2. www.thedoorwaygallery.com, for the rest of November.