The secret gallery's blog » unity

Love Unity

Marianne Slevin — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 12:17:47 +0000

‘Love Unity’ Work in progress, oil on canvas Marianne Potterton 2009

We are getting married on 14 of August! Life and art have always merged for me. So it makes sense for us to get married the same day as having the opening of the exhibition ‘Merging 3’. I have been painting a lot of Love paintings and brides lately! ‘Merging 3’, will be an exhibition of Paintings by myself, Sculptures by Madeleine Irene Smyth and Paintings and Works in Ink on Japanese ply by Mary Foudy O’Halloran. In the Courthouse Gallery in Ennistymon, opening at 7pm on 14th August running till 12th September 2009. It is also James Birthday on the 14 August! No we are not busy at all!! James Is doing wonderful work designing all of the invitations for both the exhibition and our wedding as well as posters, and some other stuff too!

To say or not to say!

Marianne Slevin — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 10:48:49 +0000

Detail of “Inner and Outer”

Twig, feather and ink Drawing Marianne Potterton 2008

It is a fine balance between leaving the viewer in the dark without any lead into the artwork and overdoing it so that all the mystery is obliterated; boxed and packaged up so tightly that there is no room for the viewers own imagination.I love when people see things in my own work that I had not seen myself. Different things are revealed to different people.

Painting is not an intellectual pursuit; for me at least, it is an attempt to experience the underlying mystery and the unity of all things. I used to think that it was about trying to make some kind of sense or order out of chaos but I now think that it is more about trying to tap into something greater than we normally think of ourselves to be. Proof of being connected to something more then little me! When I paint I feel connected, at least on the good days!

Creative work could be seen as a meeting and merging place for inner worlds and outer worlds, concoctions formed out of both unique and repeating relationships between our own inner and outer relationships with the world and ourselves.

Interventions on the beach at Fanore

Marianne Slevin — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 22:01:09 +0000

Today was a lovely day, part of it involved a journey to Fanore beach. I did something that I had not done for a while, that was go for a walk on the beach on my own with my old camera, sorry no images yet, I will have get the film processed! The sand was formed into miniature sand dunes with little islands of no dunes, in these islands I wrote words, such as: Love, unity, joy, smile, laugh and Free Tibet.

I also found the piece of silk from a Foxford blanket that had been a wedding present given to my parents. I had been carrying around in my camera case for years, taking photographs of it in different situations. The pale blue piece of silk was very fragile and had come away from the rest of the blanket. I repaired the length of silk with horses hair. It reminded me of the the white silk scarves that it is traditional for Tibetan Buddhists to give when they met someone. It also reminded me of the Tibetan prayer flags also known as Wind Horses. I took some photographs of the silk going across a large rock, in places it was a bridge and in there places it was a pale blue path. It was fun to do these playful interventions again.

The last time I did an intervention on Fanore beach was 7 years ago when I stuck bamboo leaves in the sand I had written words about the surrounding area on the leaves, then waited for the sea to come in and to see what would happen the leaves; how the words would be effected by the sea and how the leaves would be dispersed and float on the in coming waves, and I documented this. I enjoy the playful, poetic, absurdity of these interventions!