The secret gallery’s blog

This are some photographs I took today in the garden of the Secret Gallery.

“Travelling forty days the roads and trails of a distant country” Mixed Media on board, haiku poems written on Travels to India and Nepal

“This Moment” Oil crayon on a concrete, rust and dried paint mould that came out of an old bucket I found while clearing out the garden to plant vegetables!

“Love, Laugh, Sing” A recycled cable holder with words written in pencil painted and varnished.

Today the wind

greets the grass

with sea foam

or is it snow

I am obsessed by painting, I paint almost everything! I like to paint on canvas but the contents of the recycling bin work well too! All you need is a primer of half emulsion paint and half PVA glue mixed. When it has dried you have a surface you can paint on, in oil paint if you like. I like the oddness of painting in oils on unexpected materials as well as how rich the oil paint looks, in contrast to the flat skim of mass produced designs associated with packaging. This particular series stemmed from a dream I had, and then I expanded on it. I can’t go into any more detail for the moment!

I wrote/painted this haiku poem today on one of the objects I found to paint on. I like the way these pieces cross over between: paintings, poems, sculpture, instillation, and potentially, rituals, interventions, happenings and more, and all from an every day recycled vessel, designed to be thrown away after use. Humble materials are often overlooked, but sometimes they rock!  

Eight years ago, when I visited Doolin for about a month during my M.A, I wrote these poems that slightly resemble Haiku poetry. I wrote them as I walked near the Cliffs of Moher and across The Burren. Now they are draped over our sofa on lengths of cotton! Little did I know that my family would one day sit on the words in the very same house! Life is very unpredictable and mysterious!

Here

horses graze

among sea-foam

Looking down

the sea-gulls

are imitating stars

Floating on

even thistles

become soft

Every day

I walk

a circle

The moon

is reflected

in a distant rock-pool

Wind is blowing

even horses

cling to mountains

Much of the work I make explores the space between poetry and absurdity and order and chaos, it is along this shoreline that I find many great things happen; the surfers playground between deep ocean and land. Chaos is converted to order then back into chaos. ¨Journey to the moon, between two worlds astronauts sing¨.

I am fascinated by words and the ancient three lined, 17 syllabled Haiku poetry. Matsuo Bashō is one of my favourites. I have spent many years attempting to write my own versions of Haiku. In the mixed media on board pieces, Forty days travelling in India and Travels in Thailand you can see some of these Haikus. I also use text as an important aspect of the work. Such as in the painting Open your heart then open it some more and in We, where it says We both think something different but we both think the same. I see words as being very powerful and sometimes I prefer to write something meaningful to get a message across and leave the associated imagery up to the viewers imagination.