Irish Arts Blog

College Green

By Patrick Naughton

I've been told bigger is always better. Yes ladies and gentleman I am talking about the fine art of photography. I've decided to take the plunge into the unknown realm of large scale art pieces. I am including a large scale version of my recent photograph of College Green for the collection of art pieces in the new Baby Elephant Art Gallery. 

Axis Mundi, The World Tree as a Woman

When I was very small the gift I treasured most in the world was a black,fine-tipped magic marker. It was even sweeter when accompanied by a cheap multi-pack of rainbow coloured felts. When they ran out of colour you could pop the ends off and trickle warm tap water into them to extend their weakly colourful lives for just one more day. Such bliss!

As a teenager I loved drawing with dip pens...a collection of handles and nibs stained my walnut desk. Even to this day I love the feel of dip pens, technical pens and fountain pens. My fingers always seem to be stained with ink.

One day I swear I am going to splurge and get myself a Mont Blanc fountain pen, or "fine writing instrument" as they say. (sigh) ...the things that dreams are made of....

-Susanne Iles

Alchemy and the Irish Landscape

Susanne Iles

"Without symbols our lives would be as spiritually impoverished as sleep without dreams..." – Tom Chetwynd

According to the Oxford Dictionary, symbolist art seeks special symbols to express the essence of things by suggestion. It engages the viewer by appealing to the heart, personality and unconscious mind, as well as the intellect.

I'm often asked "what kind" of art do I do? I consider myself a contemporary symbolist because each painting unfolds like a puzzle box. I'll use the painting "Calcinatio Angelus" as an example. This is the first painting in my alchemy series, starting with Calcination. An inspection of the painting reveals many secrets and correspondences to the first operation in the alchemy of transformation.

• we are both Divine and Human
• "It's Father is the Sun"
• Angel is holding Saturn, lead, six-pointed star (painted gold first, then painted over in black ground with obsidian)
• re: Jacob Bohme (De Signatura rerum) "Behold in Saturn a Gold lies enclosed..."
• Matter, Malkuth, signified by a young woman
• Symbol for Aries was initially in ram headed sandals, but I liked the idea of her feet being exposed, so the symbol for Aries is now at her chest
• Saturn-prima materia
• Her eyes are closed because she has been overcome
• The entire painting was initially primed with magenta;the initial sketches were done in lead and silver point.
• Overcoming hubris
• The landscape in the background is a village close to my house called Ardgroom (in Irish it is An Rath Chruinn Dhá Dhroim) Dhá Dhroim may be translated into "two backs". The sacrum is considered one of the physical correspondences to Calcination.
• Where the angel will ultimately land is the centre of a stone circle which contains a burial cist, a stone box with human ashes within. An Aries correspondence may also be found here as the physical location had a ram's skull on the altar stone decorated with flowers.
• Purification by fire, burned to ashes
• When burned away, "primal" substances are left
• Her dress is painted with cobalt, cobalt (60CO) is a high energy gamma ray emitter, in high doses it can cause severe burns
• Cobalt is unstable and has similar properties to meteoric iron...thus her plunging to the earth like a meteorite
• Conversely cobalt is also essential for healthy nerve cells, red blood cells etc.
• Cobalt enhances oxidation, which is the next step to my second painting in the series, "Dissolution"

I'm ever hopeful that the symbols in my artwork act as stepping stones to self-discovery...or keys to gently prod the memory open...or maybe even slightly pointy sticks to provoke curiosity.

GEISHA

Artist Ellen McDermott

This 50cm x 40 cm oil on board portrait of a geisha is waiting for me to find a nice black frame for her  but somehow finding the correct frame has managed to take longer than the time it took for me to paint her.

Green Eyes

This is a notebook page that has followed me round for many years waiting for its time. I did paint an oil painting about it a few years ago but it didn't quite get there. maybe I will do something with old green eyes now.

Green eyes fell in love with the sea when she wore her robe of green.
But she wore her robe of green to mate with the sky and she loved the sky and green was the colour of her deepest secrets
He saw her robe of green quite by accident and his heart opened and his eyes changed colour. One should never see the secrets of the world by accident (though surely there are no true accidents). We are driven mad by knowledge when we learn it before our time.
He has lost his heart not to the sea, but to the seas green secret embroidered robe.