I've Moved!

My Latest blog postings are relocated to my new website bog:

http://www.rowandelle.com/wordpress/blog-4/

The Lady of Shalott

The Lady of Shalott (26 x 21 cms) Watercolour and Gouache

Lying, robed in snowy white

That loosely flew to left and right—

The leaves upon her falling light—

Thro' the noises of the night

She floated down to Camelot:

And as the boat-head wound along

The willowy hills and fields among,

They heard her singing her last song,

The Lady of Shalott. excerpt from The Lady of Shalott by  Lord Alfred Tennyson

Homage to John Singer Sargent

Twilight - Homage to Sargent's "Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose"

 On show at the 140th Anniversary Exhibition of the 

Dublin Painting and Sketching Club in the Concourse Gallery, 

County Hall Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin

31th March to 13th April 2014

“Twilight” Homage to John Singer Sargent’s “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose” 1885-86

In a letter dated 10th September 1885 to his colleague, Edwin Russell, Sargent wrote,

“I am trying to paint a charming thing I saw the other evening. Two little girls in a garden at dark, lighting paper lanterns hung among the flowers from rose-tree to rose-tree. I shall be a long time about it if I don’t give up in despair, and at any rate two months longer in England”.

Indeed, it took Sargent nearly two years before “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose” was finished due to the limited window of twilight time that was available to him in the garden of a friend’s house in Broadway, Worcestershire, England. The finished piece measures 7 x 5 feet, painted entirely en plein air.  Here Sargent captures the soft light and faery-like atmosphere of his two young models, Dolly and ‘Polly’ Barnard in the Impressionist style.

I’ve always loved this painting because of the magical quality it evokes, especially in the muted colour scheme of soft mauves and oranges. In painting “Twilight”, my homage to Sargent, I was concerned with trying to capture the nostalgia of the past; of my own childhood memories of playing out in the twilight of the long summer evenings; of the memories of my daughters, Jennie and Annie when they were that age; and of old photos I have of my grandmother wearing a similar white pinafore to the girls in Sargent’s painting.

As I couldn’t reconstruct my scene to paint it en plein air as Sargent had done, I resolved to set the scene as a still life, including the predominant flowers of lilies and roses, my grandmother’s old china tea cup and a ‘reproduction’ of the painting propped up in the arrangement, depicting images of my own children.

The cameo of Sargent’s masterpiece is painted in a loose watercolour style, to suggest a sketch, hastily done, of a fleeting moment in time. The romantic and luxuriant depictions of flowers in the still life are interspersed with torn pieces from Sargent’s many letters and painting notes. I wanted to create an ‘old fashioned’ atmosphere, cluttered with sentimental ornaments, imagining the heady scent of the profusion of flowers in Sargent’s painting. To counter balance the old, I set some collaged photos of roses into the scene, (printed on mulberry tissue paper) which gives a translucent layered effect to the watercolour. The modern touch this adds to the painting, hints at the present day while the main atmosphere reflects the past and the passing of time.

"Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose" John Singer Sargent 1885-86

Working sketch for the Cameo inset of Sargent's painting.

Recent Work

Forget-Me-Not 19 x 15 inches  Watercolour and Collage

Matrioshka 19 x 15 inches Mixed Media

detail from Forget-Me-Not

Two new paintings which will be on display at the Dublin Painting and Sketching Club 140th Anniversary Show at the County Hall in Dun Laoghaire from 31st March to 13th April 2014.

I will be posting images of the different stages these paintings went through before completion at a later date on this blog.

Merrion Square Miniatures

A Selection of 4 x 4 inch watercolours with hand-painted collage

With sales so thin on the ground it seems that 'small' is the only way to go.  I am at my best when I am working on a larger scale as I can develop the expression of the painting.  It also provides a sense of being able to become lost in my work, the happiest place in the world for me.  These large paintings are lining my walls, floors, hallway, storage shed and studio.  I take a selection in to Merrion Square with me on Sundays, but with only an eight-foot-long pitch it limits me to showing only one or two.  As Christmas is fast approaching (sorry, didn't mean to mention the "C" word so early) I've decided to re-create the world of Kate Bedell Watercolours in miniature.  Scenes, flowers, and angels are all on the agenda for the next few weeks.  I have also started another large Still life to give me some light relief from the intense intricacies of these small creations.

Finnegans Wake and Molly Bloom at the Ulster Hall Belfast

The UWA 56th Annual Exhibition will be on show in the Ulster Hall, Belfast, from 8th to 29th November 2013

Opening Hours - Monday to Saturday, 10am to 5pm

I will be exhibiting two pieces in this year's show. Both paintings are Joycean-themed works; one entitled "Mememormee" from Finnegans Wake, which incorporates Joyce's death mask as part of a seascape; the other "Her Breasts All Perfume", in which I depict Molly Bloom as Earth Goddess.  Both paintings are done in Watercolour with hand-painted paper and lace paper collage.

"Mememormee" - Finnegans Wake  16 x 20 "

“Mememormee” Finnegans Wake

I am not a scholar of Joyce. But from what I have read I can say that his genius is remarkable.  When working on some pieces for an exhibition on Joycean-themed images I started to explore the writings of Joyce from a different viewpoint.  I wondered what it must have been like to be in his head with so many overlapping ideas, words, and imagery.  It seemed to me that Joyce wanted to encompass more than just mere words in his writing.  His invented language for Finnegans Wake comes alive when it is read aloud and on hearing this, I started to “see” images in the sounds.

“Mememormee”, is a painting that started with a portrait done from Joyce’s death mask.  While working on it I became aware that I was entering an other worldness.  While I painted I heard repeatedly the words, in memorium, in memorium...  The Word, Mememormee, taken from the last passage of Finnegans Wake where Annalivia Plurabelle is dying, suited the sounds that I was intuitively hearing, so this became the title of the painting.

While working abstractly I often reach a place in the painting where I have to ‘listen’ to the painting in order to know what happens next.  It cannot be worked through as an intellectual process, rather an intuitive one. As I painted, night-time images and sounds of the sea entered my mind in waves and I stared to see an imaginary seascape at night of the view from the back of Joyce’s Tower.  However, the physical image of the Tower is not present in the painting.  I felt it didn’t need to be there as Joyce’s craggy profile embodied the spirit of the Tower.  The waves from the sea wash over his memory, crashing and lashing against the visionary words contained in Finnegans Wake. 

As a visual artist, I felt the need to physically reunite the last and first sentences of the book in a patchwork of torn collage amidst the splintered shoreline of the coast, which contains the memories of my youth, as well as being the setting for many of Joyce’s works.

"Her Breasts All Perfume" Molly Bloom 20 x 16 "

“Her Breast’s All Perfume”   Molly Bloom’s Soliloquy from Ulysses

What can I say about the inspiration for this piece?  Yes!  I love it and have used Molly Bloom’s soliloquy from Ulysses many times in my work.  Her words appear as torn scraps of exclamations amidst many of my highly decorative and textured flower paintings.  However, this is the first time that I have combined these words as collage with one of my nudes. 

As a lover of colours and Klimt, I gave this painting my “all” in terms of gesture and adornment.  The sensuality of Molly’s prose equalled my passion for painting it, and I really went to town on the overt nature of this piece of writing from Joyce.  While sketching some of the preliminary work, I experimented with using different colours and styles for the setting.  Molly’s thoughts flit like butterflies on the breeze and I thought it would be fun to produce a series of sketches on the different ‘moods’ of Molly. “...Shall I wear a red Yes...” expresses a whimsical side to this Earth Goddess (as seen in the small sketch).  Whereas the excerpt “...and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume...” reveal the power of womanhood at its best.

"...Or Shall I Wear a Red...Yes..."

New Paintings at Merrion Square on Sundays

The Wild Swans of Coole- Mysterious, Beautiful

A new year has started on Merrion Square, and I have moved my pitch to number 19.  You can find me opposite the gates of the National Gallery.  I will have a selection of new work on view on Sundays (weather permitting).  I'm usually there early, from about 10 am til 5pm if the weather stays nice.   If you're in town, do drop by to say 'hello'.