It’s great stuff, dries like plaster... Priming canvases when I don’t know what else to do is moving in the right direction. You get to be in the studio looking at unfinished work without having to entertain your critical mind. Linen rocks! It lifts beautifully as you apply the gesso. John Shinnors once told me he always makes his stretchers and stretches his canvases as a necessity. His reasoning was simple: ‘It calms the mind to watch paint dry while you smoke a rollie and have a cup of tea ‘.
Routes are created by choices, taking you to known spaces or surprises. Paintings take many paths. When I start to work on a new canvas, I have no idea where it will go, literally and figuratively. So I take any chance to travel and bring my work with me in whatever form possible, like these paintings I started in Ireland and brought to Italy. I like the (long!) drive to Italy - it’s a great time for …
I hung out with this painting for a long time. It was worked on in three different studios as the world around it went into a spin. I started it in Berlin in 2019, later bringing it to a religious sculptors studio in Ireland. Then Covid chased us to a shed at the bottom of a tiny garden, where I finished it in May 2021. It's a painting about movement, pace, action, and contemplation. The title speaks volumes about the movement of mankind from …
I started this painting by drawing sculpture shapes into a large canvas. I was enjoying myself, and it soon became quite busy. I used a light blue wash to tone it down, but I wanted the drawn elements to be visible underneath. The overall effect was that the painting took on the sense of a stone, so I added the large abstract flowers to bring back some life. Then I began to paint in earnest. At first, randomly, then instinctively. At this stage, I put the canvas …
This is the journey of “Acrobats and Flowers”, one of the oil paintings in my solo show currently on view at John Martin Gallery in London. I got really into painting these black linear shapes on a red canvas but ended up painting over it in the end. It gave me the idea of painting vertical lines as a central feature, and this is the canvas that absorbed …
I’ve been working on this painting since April 2019, almost two years. Not all the time. I face the canvas against the wall for long stretches in between painting sessions. I try to change the composition by turning the canvas sideways or upside down. The process is the only thing that remains constant. Today I decided to …
In this studio vlog, I am switching it up between shaping wax sculptures and working on large oil paintings. I made a huge patch of yellow oil paint, and you can see me using it on several canvases. I often paint on several canvases at the same time. Yellow is one of the first colours of spring. The plants outside have …
The blue canvas with the interesting patina and abstract clouds has been drying since December and is now ready to be worked on. I think my paintings need time between sessions to assimilate themselves and decide where they want to go. I have to be patient with them. I added a red shape inspired by a smaller canvas, and things were going well until I got caught in a painting pothole and couldn't
I bought this green years ago when I was travelling. Oh god, do you remember when you could travel! That's when I got it, but I never used it. The reason I never used it - I never had a reason to use it. I never knew what colours it would go with. But since I have been in lockdown, in a …
I found this image in a German art magazine and was captured by the movement in it. The narrative is about a saint on a journey. Sitting here in the studio, a year into the pandemic, I realise that the idea of travelling has become so alien to me. Ironic, considering that Christopher is the patron saint of travellers. I made a promise to myself to go and find this Patinir painting in the flesh when all this Covid is over. What’s happening in the painting is just as interesting. Patinir’s treatment of the …
It’s a day for ducks. The rain is lashing down outside while I’m trying some thin line drawings on canvas. I have been thinking of introducing thin lines for a while, and my sketchbooks are filled with drawings in this vein.
The drawings just have to manage to jump from sketchbook to canvas now. Even if they make it across, I will probably rub the lines out or paint over them in the coming days; who knows...
The oil paintings locked me out, and I couldn’t paint, but luckily my wax for the bronze sculpture saved me. I like working in wax. It’s a great medium that allows you to get lost in the process. I also began painting into these tiny etching prints with acrylic and ink. The line drawing in these is very different from painting in oil. I think the time spent working on the etchings loosened me up enough to return to the oils on canvas, and you can see how I am finding my way back to them towards the end of the video. I am enjoying painting in oils, but the paintings I am working on at the end of …
When flames and snakes are your neighbours, they can't help but be part of the story. This rough, heavy-duty cotton canvas has been in my studio for probably eight years. It was unprimed, so I spent months applying thin layers of oil paint before it went anywhere. I like the dryness that comes from all that soakage and the roughness of the surface. There were wildfires near the sea, and you could see the glow of orange at night in the distance. I was grappling with a shape similar to the one I am painting here back in Ireland. I tried it again when I got to Italy, but it wasn't until I saw the shape as a flame that it unlocked itself. On some of the smaller landscapes, these flames appeared …