Summer's here!

We have been enjoying some exceptionally fine weather here in Connemara. Temperatures reached the mid 20's and higher last week which is rare for this (or any?) time of year here.
One sign of Summer's arrival is the appearance of the Summer wild flowers and they seem (to me) to have sprung over night - clover, buttercups, pink grass heads and marguerites, my favourite of all.
Here's a photo of a clover head, such a lovely colour - somewhere between crimson, pink and purple.

I love the feathery summer grasses, the smell of them, the rustling sound of them and when you look closely, their delicate colours. Here's an example and below that a couple of seed heads.

Finally, I've included some pictures of the Marguerite, one of my all time favourite wild flowers. Their name makes them human - my daughters affectionately call them 'Big Daisies'. There is a lovely field of these flowers beside the local National school but unfortunately for me, behind a high fence ( photo below taken through the fence ). I resisted an urge to climb in to the field, deciding not to risk injury to myself or my dignity and the possibility of creating a spectacle in view of my daughter's teachers!

These close ups (below) were taken a few metres away at the roadside which is dotted with these perfect flowers at the moment. Long live Summer!

Oughterard Bog Painting II

This morning I tinkered with the piece I posted earlier this week, nothing too dramatic but I felt that the water needed some work and the area on the top right of the painting needed to be dampened down a bit.

This is another piece based on the bog near Oughterard. It began as a sketch in charcoal (below). I struggled with this one as you will see and I think this is because it isn't immediately recognisable as a landscape.

I added some broad sweeps of colour after this. The viewpoint is closer to the ground, so the horizon line has been replaced by green growth at the top of the piece. I quite like it at this stage (below), just those three colours and the strong lines.

The brown shape has become diluted as the painting has progressed (below) and I am hoping at this point to recover it to some degree before I finish. However, looking back here I am thinking once again that I might have left it at this stage. I like the movement at the centre of the piece and that pinkish colour which is lost later.

This is the next stage (below). I am less happy with it now and leave it to dry overnight.

Here is the final painting (below). I have used lots of brown ink to create more contrast and I have tried to put the shapes back as they were - the downward and outward flow of the water and the long flank of cut bog. I have subdued the green area at the top and added more paint to make the surface richer. I've left it here and am reasonably happy to call it finished. I am wondering now how it reads to someone else - let me know what you think, I'd love to have your comments.

Oughterard Bog Painting

I have started a series of paintings based on a bog near Oughterard where I took some photos last week. I wanted to do something that is faithful and sympathetic to this miry place and its vivid colours. I started this one by drawing a rough composition in charcoal (below). The tracks of water from this position give a lovely sense of movement and distance which I hope to keep in the final painting.

This is the piece as I have left it (below). It had got to the point of being too wet to continue so I will allow it to dry before making any further additions. I'm not sure yet what those might be or indeed if I will leave it as it is. Occasionally the richness of the wet paint and ink is lost when it dries out and it can look thin and unfinished. Sometimes on the other hand, if I have applied the colour heavily enough, the richness is held and heightened with a final coat of varnish. I'll have to wait and see with this one.

Bog - Oughterard

I took some photographs of this Bog just outside Oughterard on a recent trip to Galway. This section is well managed with tidy stacks of turf drying out on the higher ground above the cut bog.

I love the colours here - that rich brown against the bright greens and pale blues of the sky.  I especially like the reflections in the water. I will enjoy using these as colour and composition starting points for some new work.

While I was there, I noticed some bog cotton in the marshy wet ground. This time it is the many headed variety ( I took some pictures of the single headed bog cotton outside Clifden recently ). I couldn't get very close as I didn't have my wellies with me (!) but I managed to take this picture below.

Inspiration - Kathe Kollwitz

I have been thinking about the importance of having access to meaningful imagery in ordinary life. There is something immeasurable about the affect of a beautiful painting or drawing and it need not be an original work. This brings me to Kathe Kollwitz, a German artist about whom I thought I would write here. I have a number of reproductions of her work in my home that continue to inspire and make an impression on me when I look at them. I am also fortunate enough to have visited the museum made in her honour in Berlin, the memory of which still lingers.
Kathe Kollwitz was a German painter, printmaker and sculptor who lived through two World Wars. She was born in 1867 and died at the end of the second world war in 1945. Her work was grounded in naturalism, that is to say that she drew her inspiration from real life around her. It developed a strong expressionistic style later as she sought to convey the plight of her people, especially through her prints and political posters about ordinary human struggle in wartime. This drawing below is called 'The Child's head on his Mother's arms' - 1900.

Image taken from else-where at Flickr.com

Kollwitz began her training as a painter but moved in to printmaking - etchings, lithographs and wood cuts and finally sculpture. She made drawings throughout her life. Her early drawings have a painterly feel about them and later they become bulky and voluminous, as if sculpted. Kollwitz lost a son in the first world war and a grandson in the second and she suffered serious bouts of depression throughout her life. In spite of this, she never lost the ability to transend her own suffering and portray the simple beauty in ordinary human moments. This next drawing demonstrates this well and it is called 'Mother and Sleeping Child' - c.1913.

Image taken from David Owsley Museum of Art, Ball State University

I marvel at how she has managed to evoke such tenderness and expression with these broad sweeping marks. The next piece below is a lithograph made in 1903. It is called 'Working Woman in Profile'.

Image taken from University of Virginia Art Museum

The head and the hands are the only parts of the body she has portrayed, as with much of her work. The rest of the form, in shadow here, is completed by the imagination as is the fire that casts it's glow on the woman's cheeks. I think the next piece below has a great physical presence to it. It is a crayon lithograph from 1920 called 'Pensive Woman'.

Image taken from a-r-t.com

Finally, here is an image of perhaps the best known sculpture by Kollwitz called 'Mother with her dead Son'. This piece is in fact a copy of Kollwitz's original and it was placed is located in the New Guard house in Berlin as a memorial to all victims of war and violence. The power of the piece is intensified by the starkness of the interior of the room and its single circular roof light (not shown).

Photo taken by D. Holmes Chamberlin Jr. architect

This piece is deeply moving and an apt memorial. As with her drawings and prints, the expression comes from the head and limbs - hands, legs and feet - that emerge from the bulk and folds of carved fabric. I cannot fail to be impressed by the versatility of this great artist and her ability to convey her art with equal force and eloquence through such a variety of media. However, it is the great beauty and humanity present in all of her work that continues to inspire and affect me most.

Landscape - Progression

This is a bog landscape I've been working on as it has progressed. This is how it looked after the first sitting. The colours were true in the sense that the landscape did seem a lovely pale colour when I squinted my eyes. However, I felt that the overall appearance of the painting at this stage was quite flat. I decided that it needed more contrast and I also needed to dilute the horizontal brown lines on the left which are distracting because they are parallel with the edges of the canvas.

I darkened the middle background of the canvas by adding more gold, orange and some green. Then I brightened up the sky with some blue and added more paint and detail to the foreground.

I'm calling this one finished. The golds and browns here remind me of the raku glazes I used when I made pots. There is a lovely element of surprise with ceramics (especially raku) when the glazed pot is revealed - I will write a post about my work as a potter soon. When I use paint and ink together as I have done here, I get a sense of this as the result is not entirely predictable. I love the way the colours bleed in to each other and this sometimes has a depth about it that is like looking at the fused layers of glass and colour on a glazed pot.

Bog Cotton

I noticed a few strands of bog cotton while taking pictures out on the Bog Road. It usually appears later, around June so these were just a few sparse stands. Later it can be seen in gorgeous delicate swathes between the bog heathers.

This is the single headed variety of bog cotton which likes damp ground but not ground which is completely water logged. There is a many headed form which grows in pools of water and draws up water through it's stem. This variety uses its leaves which are long and rolled in to needles, to conserve water.

I love it's hairy delicateness and the way it swishes in the breeze. It holds a promise of Summer which is welcome as May has been unusually cold and wet so far..