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Project Statement Submission

After receiving the “Story” brief, there were two different project ideas that came to mind. I had thought about making this project about my time in first year at LSAD & use my previous works as well as unfinished pieces as inspiration or to expand on. The other idea that I thought of was fairy tales & folktales, Irish ones in particular.

Looking over my previous work, it gave me the idea to essentially merge these two potential themes together as by choosing to use rejected project ideas from the previous two projects (My original idea for the “Biophilia” project was “Hybrid Mythical Creatures from Different Cultures Around the World”-Folklore & for the “Movement” project it was “Markings & Traces Left Behind by Something That’s no Longer There”-History.    

In a way I’m working with both these two concepts that I came up with as I’m taking inspiration from the unused ideas from the previous projects & changing them into a theme about folklore, myths, legends and history, fundamentally the story of Irish culture.  This is how I came up with the idea to use the subject “Irish Folklore & History”.

As for the actual work made for this assignment, I decided to try & work between all four of the Fine Art disciplines & later focus more on painting after making it my chosen discipline. For some of the finished pieces I made I wanted to focus on a different historical period for each medium, e.g. The Irish Famine for printmaking or Medieval times for painting.

Looking back at the works I’ve made, three of the pieces I enjoyed making the most was the acrylic painting of Hook Lighthouse, the watercolour piece inspired by the story of Dame Alice Kyteler & the Irish Famine inspired lino print design.

I do think I did well when it came to creating some finished works for this project, but I feel I could have worked better when it came to doing experimentation with different mediums and materials as well trying to expand on and develop the pieces I made like I did in the preceding projects.

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Ideas Development Sketchbook Part 3

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Research Sketchbook Part 2

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A quick acrylic painting I made based on one of the edited flower photos I created at the beginning of the "Story" project. I didn't really have many green or turquoise colours left so I used a wider variety of blues as a substitute. Really happy with how it turned out in the end; the painting style in this piece kind of reminds me of Jack B Yeats painting style.

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Photos from the Francis Bacon Studio at the Hugh Lane Gallery in Dublin.

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Francis Bacon (1909-1992) was an Irish-born British artist who was best known for his paintings of the human form but with more unsettling, abstracted figures. The reason I looked at his work for inspiration in this project was because after doing the two drawing workshops, some of the works I made reminded me of his style, and I was interested to do some more research in this kind of artwork, a sort of blend between portraiture and non-figurative/abstract painting which I thought made very unique and eye-catching pieces of work.

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Ideas Development Sketchbook Part 2

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Two abstract paintings I made using leftover pouring paint from the Movement project. The first piece is inspired by the works of Sarah Walker and her paintings of meadows with wild flowers (blues and greens - grass, yellows, pinks and whites - flowers) while the second piece is based on the colour schemes that I noticed are often used in the works of 20th century Irish artists like Jack B Yeats and Lilian Lucy Davidson - mostly using dull colours like browns, greys, blacks and whites, with traces of more bright and vibrant colours like reds and oranges.

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My attempts at making a print from the Irish Famine inspired lino design. I used Indian ink to make the prints but clearly it didn't really work well. Still really happy with how the design turned out on lino though so I might maybe try and make a few better quality prints in the studios in September.

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On Monday 26th April, I took part in a Still Life workshop with Eoin McCormack. As part of this workshop, I had to create a series of drawings with colour using various different drawing methods and techniques like 1 minute drawing, blind drawing, continuous line drawing, left hand drawing and 25 minute drawing.

Overall I enjoyed the workshop and I found it very interesting to work with these different drawing methods again. I used a variety of mediums for each of these drawings including pencil, charcoal, drawing pen, watercolour pencil, conté, crayon, gel pen and oil pastel. The continuous line drawing of the gnome on the back of a cereal box is definitely one of my favourite drawings out of the lot.

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The first piece is a collage I made by tearing up newspapers and gluing the pieces onto a sheet of paper. Then I applied another layer of glue over the newspaper and rolled some red string along the paper, sticking the flowing patterns it makes into place. Taking inspiration from the free-flowing patterns in celtic art, I wanted to try and create something based on that style.

The second piece is another version of the first, but this time, I poured hot glue directly onto the paper to make the flowing patterns. Using the stained glass work of Harry Clarke and the abstract paintings of Sean Scully as references, I applied watercolour paint to the piece (the hot glue helped to separate the colours). For some added textures, while the watercolour was still wet, I sprinkled salt onto it to give a more rough and grainy look.

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Sir John Lavery (1856-1941) was an Irish painter best known for his work in portraiture. As portraiture isn't something I'm great at and I haven't really done much work in it in a while with the exception of the self-portrait workshop, I thought it might be worth practicing again and so I looked into the work of portrait artists. As I'm familiar with the work of Sir John Lavery and have seen examples of his paintings in galleries before, I decided to do further research into his artwork.

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Photos of Drombeg Stone Circle in Co. Cork which I used for inspiration when making the stone circle sculpture.

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Photos of Drombeg Stone Circle in Co. Cork which I used for inspiration when making the stone circle sculpture.

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For the third piece I made based on a historical period in Ireland, I chose the Bronze Age for this sculpture piece. I originally came up with the idea to create something using stones and crystals while attending the Dorothy Cross talk on Zoom a few weeks earlier after seeing how she incorporated natural and found objects into her work.

The base for this piece is made from an old frying pan with the handle removed. Using hot glue, I attached some packaging foam to the pan to provide a base. Next, again using hot glue, I covered the pan in artificial grass that I got in a pound shop to give it a slightly more natural look. Once all of this was done I made slits in the grass with a craft knife and put each of the stones into place.

After I had placed all the stones on the piece, I wanted to try and use up some other materials left over from previous projects which is what led me to placing an artificial candle in the centre of the sculpture. (There's a slit in the grass so it can be removed and it's covered up by the agate slice). I also placed the miniature shells, feathers, leaves and skulls in the circle as well as the flower garland around the edges to add a bit of colour and detail to it.

Since this sculpture piece is supposed to be inspired by the Bronze Age, I attached 4 metal ferns that have a bronze colour to the front of the base to represent the bronze and placed an ammonite fossil in-between them to represent how it's a prehistoric monument.

I used photos I took of Drombeg Stone Circle in Co. Cork as a reference for this piece.

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Research Sketchbook Part 1