Cassandra Voices

Category: Arts

  • Featured Artist: Manar Al Shouha

    How would you define yourself as an artist?

    In fact I feel more like a researcher trying to find the truth about herself, her uniqueness and her art fingerprint. For me art is a kind of meditation where I reach the inner self.

    Each painting is not only a scene. It’s a journey through my deep self.

    I believe that the reason we are here as humans on earth is to try and reach our inner selves.

     Was there a particular moment in your life that you felt an artistic awakening?

    As a child I was slow to develop my speech and writing abilities. I always favoured drawing. Even at school, I used to sneak out of classes and go to the drawing room instead. Since I came to the realization of this art world, I can’t believe for a second that I can work in any other career.

    How did your teachers assist in the development of your artistic practice?

    My teacher is called Bassem. He taught me that my only teachers in life should be myself and books. He used to tell me that he is only there to encourage and guide me. By the time I started studying art at university, he had already left teaching because of the war conditions and had gone to another university. In order to reach him, I had to walk for miles, just to have him look at my work. His opinion was more important to me than the mark I received.

    Your mother is one of your recurring subjects. How did she influence your creativity and personality?

    She was a teacher of mathematics in the same school that I attended. She used to come and check on me during the day, any time she didn’t find me in the class. She would take me from the drawing-room. She used to get angry at my begging her to relent, but after a while she understood my nature and began providing me with materials and even booked me into art classes. She was always talking to me as a unique person and saying that when choosing anything I should follow my heart. She used to energize me mentally and physically. My mother used to help me prepare canvases before I started painting, organise my studio and tidy it up in a way that didn’t distress me. She always tried to interpret my work and was always happy with my achievements. More than I ever was.

    Ultimately, she is the reason I am here now.

     Which of your works do you feel best represents your oeuvre?

    There are two of them in particular. The first is one of a woman sitting down, painted with two colours only and a font. It’s painted in a highly impressionistic way. I completed this work in 2021.

    The second painting shows a social gathering for two women painted in a sketched style with warm neutral colours. I made this in 2016.

    In what way does politics enter your art?

    On account of my lack of freedom in expressing myself, and because the media doesn’t always show the more interesting angles in the news, I decided to reveal my nation’s suffering in my own distinctive way, through my art.

    Damascus is always appearing in your work and your thoughts, would you like to say something about this city?

    Damascus was the capital of the Umayyads, the dream of Abbasids, and is one of the oldest capital cities of the Islamic world.

    In spite of the war, I felt safe walking down its alleys and roads. This is not an ordinary city. It holds a lot of energy. Looking at the ancient monuments, I used to feel its greatness. I represent Damascus as a lady who has faced hardship through the years, but has managed to preserves an elegance. One day prosperity will return, as has occurred throughout the city’s history, for it possesses a wealth of energy.

    Has any artist from history had a particular influence on you?

    I like Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Pablo Picasso, Honoré Daumier and Egon Schiele.

    What particular technique is at core of your practice?

    Sketching. I like the strong impression of a sketch. I find myself attracted more to the expressive school, through the use of neutral translucent colours and heavy fonts.

    Have you integrated other disciplines or artistic forms into your painting?

    No, but in my first year of university I studied five general artistic fields. I liked sculpture and engraving, especially Honoré Daumier works. I think one day I will study this discipline more deeply.

    I particularly love your paintings portraying people commuting and traveling. What is so enticing for you about these subjects?

    Regarding the painting of the bus scenes, when I start painting, I always ask myself why I am doing it? When I used to take the bus, I watched people gazing out the windows, some were angry but couldn’t express themselves, and some were looking over their shoulders as if they were waiting for time to go back.

    I felt it was not a bus, but a boat taking us away from our country and away from our present and making us live in the past. Then I started painting it again. I wanted to apologise, but somehow I was painting to say that what happened wasn’t our faults.

    In future I want to make fingerprint through my art. I want my paintings to be alive so I can live through them. Not for a moment have I felt that I am Picasso or Goya. They are dead. But when I looked at their paintings, I always felt that I am talking to them.

    Follow Manar on Instagram

    Kindly translated by Jennifer Boktor and Nermine Abdel Malak

    Manar is preparing for a new exhibition in September in Rathfarnham Castle, and recently moved to the Lodge Studio with the organisation Common Ground.

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  • On Being Old

    Oscar Wilde said  that the tragedy of being old is that one is still young.

    I am eighty-six, going on nineteen. Is this a record?

    I’ve been pruning and wood carving with my chainsaw for years. There is no shortage of wood from the trees that I planted thirty years ago. The resultant grotesque heads are visible all around my garden (all wearing face masks – you must keep a sense of humour).  Now they mock me.

    In the week before Christmas I took out my chain saw to clear away two full-grown pine trees that had fallen on our oil tank.

    Everything went well until I became ambitious. For the first time, instead of placing the machine on the ground with my foot on it, I tried to start it as they do in the movies: hold the machine in my left hand, push it down while pulling up on the starter with the right hand. That’s what the pros do. I had never tried it before.

    The result was dramatic. There was a sharp crunch in my left shoulder, plus pins and needles in my hand. A month later that is still my painful condition.

    On that day before Christmas I admitted for the first time that I’m old and it got me thinking about the disparities between age and youth.

    Demographically speaking, we oldies will soon outnumber youngsters. This is because young females are postponing reproduction until their mid-thirties. The costs of childcare and housing are prohibitive, there is a lack of confidence in the future. Also, many want an independent career. It’s a first world scenario.

    Women traditionally reproduced at about 25 years of age. Now it’s their mid-thirties and two kids are the ideal. However, since 1981 the worldwide replacement rate for us humans is down to 1.58 kids per woman. Ultimately that is not enough to prevent the extinction of the race.

    Demographics is destiny

    Thanks to modern medicine we superannuated oldies will soon outnumber fit young workers; the latter group’s taxes keep our health service going. We non-taxpayers (if you overlook  VAT) will soon consume over 50% of health costs.

    Will this trend continue? Probably. The young don’t vote enough. The seniors vote early and sometimes often. Governments know that older voters tend towards the status quo and shape their manifestos accordingly. This ensures that conservative policies preserve existing evils as distinct from liberal policies which wish to replace such evils with others. In the end the government always wins.

    We used to worry about overpopulation in the world; now we are in reverse gear, or at least the wealthy West is. I’ve cooperated in the production of six children, so I can’t really be blamed.

    But the centre cannot hold.

    The gaps in the supply services, witnessed by the shortage of truck drivers during the pandemic, are a symptom of the new malaise. Older skilled workers are retiring with few to take their place. Employers are desperate for employees.

    Don’t worry, I hear, the immigrants will eventually make up the numbers. Already they are the prime carers – for us, the oldies!  Now a world of opportunity is there for immigrants (and about time too). Instead of denigrating them, fighting to keep them out,  we will have to compete for their services, especially the skilled tradesmen.

    How many of us can fix a puncture, replace a fuse, stop a leak, change a tyre, do any of the tasks that were once second nature to my generation? Very few. We have all become a dysfunctional, middle-class burden on the young and fit. Have we passed on these humble skills? No, the young have been too absorbed in their screens to learn such mundane tasks. Now we don’t repair; we replace with newer models which are programmed to break down after the guarantee expires. Thanks to the advertising industry the world of the consumer is chasing its tail. Everybody knows.

    Is this an argument for despair?  Not at all. Some oldies have opted for the Zurich solution but most of us will cling on desperately to the last vestiges of our functionality.

    Unless euthanasia and trips to Zurich become mandatory…

    Featured Images: Carvings by Boby Quinn: ‘De Profundis’; ‘After Brancusi’; ‘Me Worry’.

  • Featured Artist: Ella de Burca

    My work begins with a consideration of how one begins to look – an exercise of empathy with you, dear reader. When a work of art is placed in front of me, I have a whole range of responses as a viewer and I remember this when I start to make a new piece. I consider my role as artist and I consider your role as reader/viewer equally. They stand on an equal footing, a plateau.

    Poem #11. Tomato Poetry House Series. 2021.

    I have a friend who calls me to talk about artists and their work. We have categories for types of artists:

    The magicians, who are all about persona, their work changes or improves your life and your life was lacking until their work fixed it – think Joseph Beuys, Marina Abromovic; the factors, those whose work is inspired by or responds to something that already happened – think Goshka Macuga, Aslan Gasimov; the intelligentsia, who make you feel like you’ll never be smart enough to understand their supersoaked insights – think Seth Price, Micol Assael; and the decor (I’ll let you figure that one out).

    There are more categories that we invent as time goes on, but the purpose serves well, to open our critical and loving heads to talking art. We analyze and consider different artists and their trajectories, what they’re putting out now versus a few years ago, and where they might go down the line. The thing that stands out most, for me, is that I have been all four different types at some stage, and indeed, the more I talk about it with other artists, the more confirmations I get that the same applies to them.

    Anemic Circles. Poem (A4 page)  & Sculpture (10m). Emergency Pavilion 2013.

    The Ella who showed the work ‘Anemic Circles’ at The Emergency Pavilion at the Venice Biennale of 2013 is different from the Ella who had a solo show ‘Flat as the Tongue Lies’ at The University of California in 2018, is different from the Ella writing this text. I have grown as a human and as such my work has grown too. Some of my furies have tempered into cooler flames, while some of my damp wood has dried into a patient but furious kindle. The one anchored point however, is the work.

    Act II. Flat As The Tongue Lies. UCLA Irvine, California. 2018.

    I have always been fascinated with the viewing process. How ‘we’ (-who’s we?) act as ‘viewer,’ and how ‘we’ learnt to look that way, both as an individual and a community. Coming from Ireland, I am always in awe of the GAA and how in a relatively short space of time a structure was created whereby every family in every town had access to play hurling and/or football, to view it and to participate in critical conversation with peers, of analysis, predictions and strategy. The same could be done with art.

    Choir (Haar). Kunstenfeest Watou. 2021. Photo by Dirk Pauwels.

    With gestures, sculpture and poetry, I create performative work that combs through these issues. Coming from the position of being a cis-female, white woman I am inspired by the history of womanhood, the struggles, the victories. I have an imaginary coven who I sporadically turn to for strength, inspiration and help. Some have names, such as Biddy Early, Hildegaard of Bingen, Cassandra and Joan of Ark, and some don’t, such as the women in the Magdalene Laundries.

    During the pandemic I heard on the radio that the women lace makers of Headford, Galway were not affected by cholera and typhoid during the 19th Century because they had to wash their hands so often. The money they earned was crucial to their families and if there was one speck of dirt on the lace piece then it would be worthless.

    Choir (Doh Soh). Newbridge House. 2021. Photo by Louis Hawk.

    I was in awe and in shock to think about how a century after these industrious women making money from lace to feed their families, there came 20th century women who were torn away from their families and incarcerated in the Magdalene Laundries, set to work knotting lace, string after string – maybe even listening to radio programmes about women from Headford, Galway while they worked.

    Now we’re here in the 21st Century, and women’s labour is still underpaid, often unpaid, and the labouring women unseen, unheard. A person’s voice is a source of great power, and those who gain from suppressing that power have spent centuries sewing throats shut. Landlords, priests, politicians, misogynists, the cast of characters hasn’t changed.

    Lettuce Síle. 2021

    I created a cast of embroidered throats standing in the gesture that fans out from headless sackcloth bodies. The headless straw women, disembodied anatomies, could represent the Headford women making lace or the Magdalene women incarcerated in the laundries, they could be representations of viewers today observing the work or they could be me.

    These voiceless throats and sightless spectators are woven into a spatial, figurative, yet ambiguous relation of dependence and power. Some of this body of work was shown in ‘Guest’ at Newbridge House, Fingal, during the Summer of 2021, a group show curated by Marysia Wieckiewicz-Carroll, while other parts were shown at the Kunstenfestival  Watou, in Belgium, curated by Chantal Pattyn and Benedicte Goesaert.

    Tomtom’s (watercolour and tomatoes) 2021.

    During the Summer I also grew my own tomatoes and read feminist poems to them. You are what you eat. I would prefer to eat food that does not prop up the poisonous economic structure so harmful to our environment. These tomatoes became my audience during the pandemic, conditioned by my tastes, my carefully curated poetry show. And when they were ripe, I ate them under the full moon.

    Vodka Blue Pope. (Watercolour, eggshells and Lunaria annua) 2021

    More recently I have been imagining the potions and magic remedies created by Biddy Early while painting an inventory of the plants growing in my garden. I mash up the painted flower and add it to the image of what was there. When assembled, I imagine this body of work as an art apothecary, with different combinations of the ingredients creating different viewing cures. Some of this work will be shown online in Kevin Kavanagh Gallery in November/December 2021.

    It’s easy enough to describe how I got to this point, artistically, professionally and humanly, but going forward is more opaque. Actually, in thinking of this word ‘opaque,’ I often get stuck. In photoshop there is a tool called ‘opacity,’ which, when at its highest percentage, renders the image totally visible. In real life, it means obscure of sense, invisible. But I often get the two mixed up, and I think that this strange double meaning kind of fits when I use it to describe my future. I know I’ll still be making the work, I just don’t know where you will be.

    Defiance (Roof Without Walls.) 2017. This work is in the collection of the Irish Arts Council.

    My work has been supported by the Irish Arts Council, Askeaton Contemporary Arts, Fingal County Council and Culture Ireland. Most recently I was the recipient of a Platform 31 Award for County Laois. I am currently pursuing a PhD at KU Leuven entitled ‘Modes of Viewing: How to Act.’

  • Addressing the Viewer

    What do I want from you? Why do I write this text? Is it because I want to share something, or because I was told to? In considering how ‘you’ will read it, (‘you’ hopefully being someone other than ‘me,’) I would like to share some things relating to the development of viewership and audience engagement.

    This is by no means a definitive list, rather, a haberdashery of sorts, my own narrative stitched through the history shelves into relevant spines, to prop up against my own bar, serving tall pints poured with personal narratives. How academic!

    Good Performance

    The majority of good performance dictates to its audience how they must act. Rather than being something written down in a pamphlet to digest and practice pre-show, the way you should watch the performance has been defined through the performance itself.

    Live, in the moment. The only way to learn the new terms of engagement is to attend, to witness, to participate (or not participate), and most of all, to act.

    It’s like ballroom dancing with a good dance partner, the leader leads, the viewer follows. Dance with a bad dancer, however, and you might be inclined to rebel, to revolt or to leave the dancefloor. I think it was Chekhov who said, show the audience a gun in the first act, you had better use it in the third.

    I draw your attention to Hugo Ball, dressed up in a cardboard cylinder to perform his abstract phonetic poem ‘O Gadji Beri Bimba.’ It caused chaos among audience members as they just did not know how to react, what to take seriously, how to engage.

    Language, the motherload of culture, the determiner for how we think and communicate, whittled down into a collection of sounds chirruped and chanted by an obelisk shaped man. The ramifications were huge, to challenge the central pillar of communication, attacking it in such a way, also challenged the perspectives which we garner through language, behaviours, nationalism, politics, history, etc.

    How do we perform (via language) in our everyday lives after that, knowing that it has been called out for being insincere? Ball wasn’t the first artist to use this medium, before him there was Marinetti, with his ‘Zang Tumb Tumb,’ and also Russian Futurist Aleksei Kruchenykh’s

    Zaum language in ‘Victory Over the Sun.’

    Language strikes again:

    Hans Richter. Dada, Art and Anti-Art.

    Marinetti and the Futurists

    Marinetti and the Futurists welcomed heckling and shouts from their audience. The viewer was crucial to the performance, so much so that they would glue them to their chairs, patches of trousers and skirts screaming off as tempers tore.

    They wanted to break the compliance of passive consumption, of blind acceptance, and so agitating the viewer towards a riot was a crucial factor in their performance. This focus on the role of the viewer as a fundamental component echoes throughout the twentieth Century, most notably with Bourriaud’s Relational Aesthetics. In stating that the only way to truly engage with an artwork was to be a part of it, this movement placed the viewer centre stage, the artwork’s legacy depending on their enthusiasm. Only then could the artist be sure that responsible viewing had been contracted.

    Relational Aesthetics also sought to display the network of relationships necessary in creating a work of art, to blur the boundaries between negotiating the piece as creator, and negotiating the piece as viewer. But, as Claire Bishop pointed out, simply making us aware of these negotiations does not necessarily introduce a form of criticality in that it does not define what types of relationships we are looking at, if they are equal, or democratic. She criticized the vagueness of many R.A artworks, but held up Santiago Sierra as a successful Relational Aesthetics artist, for showing the subversive, and sometimes unequal transgressions that happen in many negotiations.

    ‘Ten People Paid to Masturbate,’ Santiago Sierra. Cuba. 2000

    Roman Britain

    ‘The Romans in Britain’ when staged in 1980 at the National Theatre was sued by Mary Whitehouse, who accused the director Mr Bogdanov, of procuring an act of gross indecency between two males actors in the play.

    The fact that no act really happened, (there was a simulation of a male rape scene) did not seem to matter, nor did the fact that Mrs. Whitehouse never actually saw the play. Her moral stance overrode these factors, and she felt obliged to tackle the theatre for staging a play which she considered unnecessary and indecent.

    Fortunately, the court ruled in favour of the theatre. It was the first male rape scene to ever appear on a stage in the UK. Accounts from the opening night speak of nine hundred audience members, not shouting or walking out, but sitting frozen for the remainder of the play. ‘The atmosphere was later compared to the night in London theatres when it was announced before curtain-up that JFK had died.’

    There have been recent attempts by morality campaigners to ban theatrical productions (e.g. ‘Behzti’ UK, 2004, ‘Jerry Springer, The Opera,’ 2005, and ‘Sur le concept du visage du fils de Dieu’ Paris, 2011), which brings back to the forefront the question of censorship, and deciding what narratives are appropriate for audiences today.

    A group exhibition I was part of in Turkey 2016, ‘Post-Peace,’ was cancelled last minute by the institution, Akbank Sanat, deemed to be too culturally insensitive to stage. The offending artwork ‘Ayhan and me’ by Belit Sağ, is a video created from news archives which showed a Turkish police officer bragging about killing Kurdish people.

    Belit Sağ. Ayhan and Me. 2016

    In this age of fake news, and political correctness, it is more important than ever that we don’t treat audiences as children. Which begs the question; is engagement with morality absent from the modus operandi of our times?

    Representing the Immoral

    Art has a necessary role in presenting situations that challenge and provoke, it is through these provocations that a society sets its standards of behaviour. Rather than questioning the role of morality in art, (which doesn’t exist,) in order to be relevant, art must, to some extent, represent the immoral.

    These provocations offer the possibility to stimulate reflection on and discussion around what is acceptable, and what is not, and why not. Without this avenue culture becomes something that we consume, the same way we consume McDonalds, or a Coca-cola.

    Placing the artwork in a way that the viewer can have the maximum opportunity to be aware of their role is, for me, the ideal. Here I think of Guatemalan artist Aníbal Lopez (a.k.a. A-1 53167.)  For the piece ‘El Préstamo (The Loan) (2000)’ situated in Guatemala City, the artist robbed a citizen on the street at gunpoint, and used the stolen money to pay for an exhibition at Contexto. This included invitations, installation, a lavish opening reception, all paid for by this victim, now unwillingly performing as patron. Upon arrival at the exhibition, the audience learned these events through a poster on the wall, the only visual piece on display. The attending viewer became complicit in this crime by participating as viewer, and as consumer. Which makes me wonder about complicity and the act of spectating: Are not all audiences complicit?

    THE LOAN. On the 29th day of September, 2000, I did an action, which consisted of assaulting a person with the appearance of middle class. It was performed in the following way: armed with a gun I went out to a street in zone 10, stopped such a man of about 44 or 45 years, brown hair and a little overweight, I pointed in his face and told him, this is not an assault, it is a loan, and will bring visual language to your children. Such a person I call Q874.35. This work is being sponsored by the man that was assaulted, who has funded: invitations, assembly and part of the toast of this sample. A-1 53167 Guatemala 21/10/508 D. O.)

    Perhaps this is why the most popular form of viewing has remained the same for over a hundred years, since The Moscow Art Theatre reformed the relationship between the viewer and the stage.

    Stanislavski nailed the fourth wall up and many have been banging it down ever since. The ramifications of this wave have crashed through into other art forms, television, cinema, and sometimes, contemporary art, with many collectives fighting its wake to establish other ways of viewing. This invisible wall, invented by this collective, removed the necessity of communicating directly with the audience, establishing instead an experience where the viewer is required to watch this bubbled environment, creating an altogether more realistic performance and allowing for suspension of disbelief. The audience arrive and become silent observers, flies on the wall with no responsibility.

    It remains, however, the most popular way of watching something today, this disengaged mode and you may ask, should it be so?

    At this moment, culture cannot serve as a salve for nervous souls, even if the (then) President elect tweeted his disapproval of Broadway actors for using the theatre to communicate their doubts about his future administration.

    Art’s particular license to speak up, to misbehave, mock and imitate reality, to blur genres and disciplines, this freedom, as long as it lasts, must be deployed to prevent the normalization of the emerging authoritarian paradigm.

    To recap…

    Violate language and communicate it. Curse your audience and kiss their throats. Question what you’re watching. Attack ‘appropriate’ narratives by telling the truth. Replace complacence with awareness. Leverage weakness to break power. Attack acts of gross indecency by staging acts of gross indecency. Take an axe to axioms. Swallow bubbles for breakfast. Divorce disengagement.

    Ask in the taking, instead of begging for scraps under the table, howl at the edges of town.

    Ella de Burca. Standards. 2016

    Featured Image: ‘Choke’

  • Featured Artist: Turlough Rynne

    The adventure, the great adventure is every day to see something new emerge in the same face, and this is greater than any journey around the world
    Alberto Giacometti

    Finishing a piece is complicated. The decision is sometimes based on whether there are enough lines and shades on the page; everything is balanced. This generally means it is, compositionally, a good work or drawing.

    If you are fighting with it and grappling with too much shade or darkness, it can get tricky. In my process, I often cut up or crop drawings to improve their composition or remove an element that is not working – it’s the last effort at salvaging a piece – and it doesn’t always work.

    Some pieces stay in folders, unseen, invisible. Then there are drawings that can take less than ten minutes to complete – a quick adjustment in perspective or switch from pen to brush can alleviate any problems that were caused from the first attempt.  In drawing, there is no right or wrong approach, and experimentation plays a crucial role in the process.

    Seeing images from different perspectives is fascinating. It was Goethe that said every new object, well observed discloses a new organ within us.

    So something new gets created or ‘disclosed’ when I photograph River House – a concrete office block near the Liffey in Dublin.  When I collect the 35mm prints another new organ is disclosed.

    Original 35mm print.

     

    River House I.

    Same goes for when I sketch from the photographs, perhaps more than once, and when I unwrap said picture from the framer.

    Another new organ can be disclosed when I see the picture in different surroundings hanging perhaps on an unfamiliar wall.

    River House has since been demolished to make way for a hotel, another new object I suppose. Both the photograph and the drawing become part of the architectural history of Dublin, in a way an archive of an ever-changing city.

    It is often the architecture of cities that I am interested in, whether that be bridges, historical buildings, or their infrastructure.

    The Process of Creation

    Every new object, clearly seen, opens up a new organ of perception in us
    Goethe

    River House II.
    Site of River House since demolition.

    This process of creation, image-making or mark making, changes how I see the original location.  Having photographed and painted the interior of Dublin’s General Post Office or Busáras, one of Ireland’s most important modernist buildings, it is a treat to return to these spaces and see how they have changed.

    The experience of image-making changes my perception of the spaces also – having observed the object (for example the GPO main hall) I have the ‘new organ of perception’ is present when I revisit.

    Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) posited sense data as “third things”, standing between material objects and perceivers, and serving as the immediate objects of perception.

    Sense data are the things that are immediately known in sensation: such things as colours, sounds, smells, and so on.

    Russell used the object of the table as an example: ‘The real table, if there is one, is not the same as what we immediately experience by sight or touch or hearing, is not immediately known to us at all, but must be an inference from what is immediately known.’

    Russell wanted a new connection between sense-data and objects; a new conception of objects as logical constructions built out of or referred from sense-data.

    Objects themselves cannot be viewed as substances without sense-data, they alone are invisible.  Everything we see is an image itself – a projection.

    My work is this third thing – the immediate object of perception. It is an effort to understand objects and how the brain perceives them by slowing down the process of visual perception, picture by picture.

    Turlough Rynne is an artist based in Ireland. For more information visit www.turloughrynne.com

    Further Reading

    Giacometti: Sculpture Painting Drawing, Thames and Hudson 1972
    Goethe and the Evolution of Science
    Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
    The Great Philosophers, Arcturus Publishing 2008

    General Post Office, Dublin.

  • Featured Artist Marc di Saverio

    Marc di Saverio hails from Hamilton, Canada. His poems and translations have appeared internationally. In Issue 92 of Canadian Notes and Queries Magazine, di Saverio’s Sanatorium Songs (2013) was hailed as “the greatest poetry debut from the past 25 years.” In 2016 he received the City of Hamilton Arts Award for Best Emerging Writer. In 2017, his work was broadcasted on BBC Radio 3, his debut became a bestseller in both Canada and the United States, and he published his first book of translations: Ship of Gold: The Essential Poems of Emile Nelligan (Vehicule Press). On May 1st, 2020, Guernica Editions published Crito Di Volta. Di Saverio studied English and History at McMaster University, but never took a degree, due to illness. He is the son of Carlo Di Saverio, the scholar and teacher who studied Linguistics and Languages at University of Toronto (M.A.,1981). Di Saverio’s poem, “Weekend Pass”, was adapted into the movie, CANDY — directed by Cassandra Cronenberg, and starring the author himself — which was selected to the Toronto International Film Festival in 2013. In late 2020 he received Nobel Prize in Literature nominations, chiefly for CRITO DI VOLTA.

    1. THE EIFFEL TOWER AMID KINGDOM COME (mixed media on board)

    So, after a twenty year hiatus, I began painting and drawing again in 2018, due to a writer’s block that forced me into this earlier-studied realm of creativity. In this, one of my first of paintings, THE EIFFEL TOWER AMID KINGDOM COME, I envision Paris after the Second Coming of Christ, when peace, love and joy will reign supreme on earth, and there is no more war, famine, or strife. I portray a “Golden Age”, when Angels, saints, and believers in Christ will encompass the world during the thousand year period depicted in the Book of Revelation, in the New Testament of the Bible.

    2. A CITY IN THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN (marker on board)

    In the painting, I imagine what a city in Heaven might look like, suspended on the air, the air of the sky moving under the bridge as though water. Of course, above the bridge, and below the bridge, we see the same colours, suggesting the elevation of this city-portion of Heaven. The structure in the painting came from my imagination, completely. I began to paint by imagination after seeing some of William Blake’s inspired paintings.

    3. A FUTURE FARMHOUSE AND ITS LAND (marker and gouache on board)

    This painting was, too, generated and painted from my imagination, wherein I saw what a future farmhouse and its land might look like in a hundred years, when there is a resurgence of divisionism, but not in just painting, but in reality, as displayed in this picture. Like a work by Escher, some parts seem impossible and both visually wonderful and visually impossible to fully understand or appreciate because of certain geometric anomalies in the painting, which was executed in late 2019, during a snowstorm.

    4. CHRIST ON THE CROSS (soft pastel on board)

    Here is one of the first drawings I executed, in 2018, after twenty years hiatus from painting.  After having composed two other crucifixion scenes, in which Jesus was clearly harrowed, I wanted to create a picture of the crucifixion where Jesus Christ seems to be at peace, rather than in throes, because I wanted to be able to have a permanent vision of a Jesus who might have accepted his fate, or at least in this moment captured in the picture. The relative serenity in his face, considering his situation, expresses my aim exactly.

    5. THE PANTHEON AFTER A SNOWFALL (marker and oil on board)

    This painting was created in late 2019, during winter, in Canada. I had always wanted to see the Pantheon after a snowfall, so, I imagined just that, and then executed it upon a stretch of board. I added the white snow to lend the feeling of safety, peace and holiness to the viewer. Notice that, in contrast to the bland snow, the Pantheon and surrounding buildings are electrified with pure, neon colour, giving an updated, hyper-modern feel to the composition, while at the same time retaining the elegance and universality of the Pantheon.

    6. THE FOUNTAIN OF IDENTITA IN RACALMUTO, SICILY (mixed media on board)

    The Fountain of Identita, which not longer exists — it was demolished in the late 20th century — once stood in the centre of Racalmuto, Sicily, wherefrom my mother and her side of the family came in the 1950’s. By way of imagination, and by way of imitating an old postcard of the Fountain, I created this painting, which I wanted to be so illuminated with pure colour that no one would ever forget the fountain, despite its nonexistence, today.

    7. SELF-PORTRAIT WITH LONG HAIR (marker, oil and gouache on board)

    In this, my first ever self-portrait — i painted it in 2019 — I attempted to transmit the image of my face from a photograph onto board. The photograph depicts me at the age of twenty-seven, when my hair, unlike today, was extremely “big”, thick, and long. Though I do not have the courage to grow my hair this long again, I figured I would at least capture it in painting. As you can see, I used to do my best to dress well in those days.

    8. A VENETIAN CANAL WITH GONDOLAS (Oil on Board)

    In this, my first pure oil painting in twenty years, I successfully, by way imitating a photograph i had taken in Venice, long ago, depicted two boats in a canal, at about sunset. The boats are not gonadliered, suggesting the day is at a close. I attempted to use an impasto style in the piece, in order to portray the denseness of the beauty in that immortal city.

    9. LIAM GALLAGHER, 1995 (mixed media on paper mounted on board)

    Here is a depiction of the Irish-blooded singer and superstar, Liam Gallagher, from the band Oasis (1991-2009) — a depiction of the rock star at his peak, in 1995, around the time when Wonderwall, their biggest hit, was released to the astonishment and happiness of Oasis fans. This is one of my few works that was BEGUN tweny years ago, but finished most recently, in 2020. My greatest challenge, here, was to truly achieve semblance of Gallagher, which I believe I have.

    10. SELF-PORTRAIT WITH RED HAT AND WINTER JACKET (Oil and Pen on Board)

    Here is my second ever self-portrait, which depicts me in the present, as opposed to when i was twenty-seven, like in the aforementioned self-portrait in gray. As you can see, the Jacket almost looks like Napoleonic era military fatigues, but this was unintentional. All I wanted was to paint something that would resemble me — and my current coat — and i think I succeeded!

    11. QUARANTINE (Mixed Media On Paper Mounted On Board)

    This painting is designed to capture the feeling of isolation induced by the quarantine in which most of us have living, since the beginning of the Covid Pandemic, which has had untold effects upon the minds of so many. This painting reflects the psychological, rather than the physical effects of Covid, since, too often, the effects of the pandemic on the minds of millions have been overlooked, or, to me, underreported. 

    12. ONE BLUE FLOWER (Watercolour on Paper)

    Finally — and for old time’s sake — here is an example of one of my paintings from the old days — from tweny years ago — when I had recently discovered painting. In those days, I was in love with the delicacy of watercolour, and had not yet explored oil painting, or even drawing, for that matter. The sublime uncontrollability — the riskiness — of watercolour, enthralled me. In this particular painting of a blue flower, the viewer is hopefully taken aback by not only the precision, but the acquiescence of the colours of work therein. I consider this my first real painting. I hope that you find as much pleasure in viewing it as I had in creating it.

  • Featured Artist Annelie Carlström

    I have always been a creative person. When I was a child I loved to draw and cut paper, my kindergarten teacher was ever so impressed by my straight cutting lines!

    My grandfather painted in oil and made sculptures out of wood he found in nature. He told me that there is no tree in the world that looks like another tree. That sentence has stuck with me over the years, and I can still see his drawings of trees in my head. That sprawling line in black carbon. The drawn line is very important to me, so is the craftsmanship. I really want to feel the person behind the drawing/illustration, and when it is all digital I can’t sense the person behind it any longer, and lose interest.

    Career Options

    When I was growing up I knew I wanted to work creatively in some way, but I was not sure how.

    I started out with ballet, but after being rejected by the Swedish ballet school I began to dream about becoming an architect, living in a self-drawn house with two big dogs.

    Then, when I was about twelve I realized that I was quite good at drawing. We had a class in school where we drew onions with soft pastel crayons and that was the first time I understood that I had a true talent for drawing. I captured the onion’s expression and the wink on the surface.

    Grandfather

    My grandfather, who was such an important person to me, always said that there was no future in being an artist. He himself was from a working class background and quit school at the age of twelve, with no further possibility to study. Since I had the option to study whatever I chose, he thought I should become a doctor, or some other serious occupation where you made a lot of money and earned respect.

    So with that in mind I have tried to come up with more commercial ways of working creatively. Becoming an artist and being successful felt impossible and something that only rich people with great confident could aspire to.

    ©Annelie Carlström

    Interior Designs

    When I turned nineteen and applied for art school I had a plan to become an interior designer.

    I envisaged myself strolling around in fancy suits with a leather portfolio full of brilliant ideas. It was not so much the design work I was interested in but rather the lifestyle.

    Being a successful business woman became a big goal, but it had to be in the creative industry. After a year of painting still life in oil and drawing croquis we had a class in illustration and from that point on that was all I wanted to do.

    It was the perfect mix of artistic work, while remaining in the commercial world. To become an illustrator I had to apply to the most competitive college in Sweden, so I have attended a lot of art and design schools, seven years in total. It took me a while to develop my own way of drawing, and it did not evolve fully until my last term of Design College.

    I graduated from Beckmans College of Design in 2007. Then I felt quite scared and alone in the world. I had my portfolio of pencil drawings and a well-respected qualification, but I had not done any illustration work, and settled for a part-time job at a grocery store to pay my way.

    As that summer went by I felt more and more frustrated. I suppose I am a very emotional person with little patience. Then in the beginning of autumn something amazing happened. The best illustration agency in Sweden got in touch and said they wanted to represent me!

    I could not believe my luck. From then on my career received a real push and I worked with all sorts of clients from all over the world. One of my first jobs was from a bank with offices all over the world. I got paid so much I really could not believe it!

    Some people said that I had sold out, but I think they were just jealous. My first objective was to make a living as an illustrator, but after doing so for over a decade I’m more interested in the artistic expression of telling my own story, rather than clients’.

    ©Annelie Carlström

    Magic and Poetry

    In my drawings I want to create magic and poetry. I want you to sense the vibrations from the pen. I want to take you to other places, other dimensions. Where words are unnecessary.

    My favourite subject is girls and nature. Perhaps I’m just drawing myself in different versions over and over again. I don’t want to do what is expected of me. If I do so I feel I have failed.

    I don’t want to draw the happy life, the smiling girls and the cosy gardens, which can make things tricky when working commercially. Indeed, clients always ask if my characters could smile a bit more… It’s as if there is no place for seriousness in the sales department. Perhaps that’s why I’m doing more and more personal art these days.

    Like many others, I draw inspiration from many different things. I often find it in novels. At the moment my favourite author is Agneta Pleijel, I want to draw like she writes. I am also inspired by great artists like Jockum Nordström, Klara Kristalova and Lucian Freud.

    ©Annelie Carlström

    Instagram

    Even though I have a hate/love relation with Instagram, I must admit that it is a big source of inspiration, even though it can be quite fast paced and homogeneous. You see so much in such a small amount of time. A true piece of art get swiped away in a matter of seconds.

    It’s such a different experience to sitting at a bench in a museum, experiencing an artwork in real life, where it is in its natural environment with appropriate lighting.

    I love going to museums. They are like churches for me, where I can find pieces and feel the love in the world. In Stockholm we have the Nationalmuseet, a place I love to visit, where there is art from all times across history.

    ©Annelie Carlström
    Detail of the above ©Annelie Carlström

    Since I was a child I have loved naturalistic portrait painting, particularly the fabric that often folds and the way the dresses fall in old paintings.

    I’m also very interested in the face, specially the eyes with their gaze and the wink in the eye. Overall I love to work with details, drawing the hair shaft, and trying to understand how a certain surface can be translated into a drawing – like a knitted sweater or a shiny plastic jacket.

    ©Annelie Carlström

    I just love to take my time, and not work under pressure, allowing the line to go on the paper; filling up the spaces moment after moment. But of course when working with illustration you have a timeline to adapt to, which can make the drawing stressful and without soul. I try hard to avoid that. It gives me a feeling of being without a purpose, where everything is meaningless.

    ©Annelie Carlström

    Piece by Piece

    When I illustrate I draw everything in pieces. I draw the head on one piece of paper, the hair on another, the shoes on another etc. Then I scan the drawings and put it all together in the computer. I often say that I cheat a bit, because when you draw big and then make it smaller in the computer it looks more detailed than it really is.

    When I started out I used the mouse to work with the illustrations on the computer, but now I use a Wacom board and that makes the process so much easier, and I guess I also work more on the computer than before because it is so easy to adjust the picture digitally. But lately I’ve got more into making drawings as originals, big ones. I have not managed to finish anything yet but I hope I will find the time soon.

    ©Annelie Carlström

    Collaborations

    I’m originally a lone wolf, but lately I have managed a few interesting collaborations. One is with the excellent artist Petra Börner. We had an exhibition together at The Museum of Drawings called ”Drawn to the Line” here in Sweden, and it was the most creative fun I have had in a long time.

    ©Annelie Carlström

    Petra works in a completely different style that goes really well with mine. To see two artistic expression meet and create a new one was a true awakening for me.

    We are now trying to find a new location for the exhibition and I’m also working on new drawings and sculptures in ceramic that can be part of the original exhibition.

    I’ve also collaborated with jewellery artist Sanna Svedestedt Carboo. I draw her leather jewellery and invented a woman wearing them. We both love braids and pine trees so that was a natural theme for collaboration.

    The exhibition Braid.Stone.Needle that includes my drawings and Sannas art jewelry is currently being showed at MUSA, a fashion store and Gallery in Gothenburg, Sweden.

    I have also just started a artist collective together with artist Mia Nilsson called Fina Linjen. Some of Sweden’s most excellent illustrators is part of the group. I hope it will have a bright future.”

  • Featured Artist Michal Greenboim

    Growing up in a small rural town in Israel, Pardes Hanna, has shaped me into who I am today. My grandparents were part of the hundreds of thousand people who fled Europe prior to the Holocaust and settled the land of Israel in the 1930s. It was important to them that we were raised as Israelis. They instilled their love for the Jewish country into us and this is what has inspired me throughout my career as a photographer. My image making is a reflection of my childhood in Pardes Hanna; it is filled with my interpretations of the emotions and senses that I grew up with: from the breeze I felt while swinging on a tree swing to the sweet tangy flavor I tasted from our mango tree. These moments are what has influenced my work and continue to be a part of my photography every day.

    From On Our Journey To Home

    I did not always notice that my photography was shaped by my childhood memories. During the years, I realized that I had been always carrying memories of the house I grew up in with the big luscious trees surrounding it deep down within. I develop these feelings further and organize my work into a book. Forming my book, The Orchard Trail, which is based on my raw childhood emotions, feelings, and memories. It was only while working on the book that I realized that most of my photographs are based on the innocence from my childhood.

    Pardes Hanna, translated directly into “Hannah’s Orchard”, is a town that was filled with orange, avocado, and mango orchards. I remember small moments such as exchanging our avocados for the neighbor’s mangos. My images reminded me of how it felt to lay on the grass under our big tree reading a book.

    Looking up to the skies and inventing stories based on the shapes of the clouds.

    Hearing the rustling leaves and picking oranges with my father in the nearby orchards.

    On a rainy day, I would set a chair under an umbrella and listen to the sound of the raindrops.

    As kids, we would walk over to our neighbor’s house for story time or a piano lesson.

    These are the memories that inspire my photographs, they remind me where I started and who I really am.

    Through the process of placing images together and choosing which ones would come together to form diptychs, I learned so much about how different aspects of my life are threaded together once they’re viewed on a deeper level.

    The Orchard Trail became a homage to the magical place I grew up in. My grandmother planted a tree in the backyard of my childhood home when her and my grandfather arrived in Israel in 1933 from Germany, against her family’s will. The tree became a symbol of growth, its roots planted deep into the ground to prove to anyone who thought they didn’t belong that they were staying. I learned who I am through the creation of my book, The Orchard Trail where I explored the importance of the family that I raised and the way I engrained my values into my children and future generations. After finishing The Orchard Trail, I began working on a new project called, Keeping the Flame.

    It was during this project that I researched more about my Jewish heritage and looked into the past to learn about the roots that have brought me to where I am today. I focused on who I am as a modern Orthodox Jewish woman, and also researched the Jewish artist, Chagall. I then moved on to learning about the Jewish homeland, Israel, a land that has held my past along with my future, through analyzing the art of Israeli painters. Lastly, I represented my relationship with the land of Israel through my photographs of ballerinas (images 12-16 ) who are always in motion but are also stable and balanced, just like I have moved away and back to Israel several times, I always know that it will be there as a place for me to call home.

    Learning about who I am in the past, present, and future has given me depth and appreciation for where I came from, the journey I am on, and for the family that I’ve raised.

    In Cuba, I was exposed to a small Jewish community, one of the smallest in the world. They serve as a proof that when a community sticks together, they can overcome anything. I realized then the importance of having a community as support, and this inspired me further to tell the story of the Jewish people. They showed me that even with limited resources, the importance that the Jewish traditions play in who they are and what they believe in. Furthermore, it showed me how vital it is for us, as a nation, to pass down our traditions even when it is difficult, because if not for us, they will not exist.

    From On Our Journey To Home 

    In my book On Our Journey To Home, I visually describe the migration of my family from Europe to Israel in 1933. This immigration story tells of the many challenges and hardships involved with such an effort to establish life in a new land. At the same time, it expresses the sense of optimism and the determination that sustained the hopeful vision. The journey involves sacrificing closeness to friends and family, learning a new language and adapting to a different culture in order to fulfill a dream of a home and better life for generations to come.

    From On Our Journey To Home

    I poetically sketch the feelings and dreams of my grandparents beginning with the time of the diaspora, their fears and insecurities involved with life in Europe at the time. They dreamt of a place for a new beginning, where they could start over and shape it however they desired, a place where they would create a just and giving society. Therefore, they settled in a small town called Pardes Hanna’, where they farmed the land, and built the town from the ground up with their own hands.It was a new and optimistic beginning, but not always a smooth one, with a lot of difficulties and sadness, Life in the new land wasn’t easy. There was much fear; of the enemies around, of illness, and that their dream would not come true.

    The story continues on for five generations, to include the experience of life for my family in Israel today, which is wonderful, far beyond anything my grandparents imagined more than a hundred years ago.

    It was a journey back in time while I spent part of it searching the archives of Germany, Israel and the United States, reading letters that my grandmother wrote, or articles written about her in newspapers. I learned taught everything I could from the places where they lived, and the spirit of that period, and so this book was created, by virtue of imagination and thought.

    The title image is from Michal Greenboim’s last project “On Our Journey To Home”

    www.michalgreenboim.com/on-our-journey-to-home

    www.michalgreenboim.com/instagram

    www.michalgreenboim.com

     

     

  • Featured Artist: Imelda O’Reilly

    Tumbling Towards Home is a short documentary, a coming of age story about Malcolm Adams, an Irish immigrant who moved to New York in 1989 to study acting under Alan Langdon. He works through the grief of losing his mother and friend Philip Seymour Hoffman. This leads to a decision of where to place his hat down and call home.

    The film delineates themes of identity, homeland, narratives across cultures, the arts, addiction and how to overcome grief. The film also explores the family unit, family on a psychological level, parenthood, domestic violence and references colonization and PTSD. Tumbling Towards Home explores the liminality of cultural boundaries, shifting between cultures and perspectives on the Irish diaspora, both leaving and returning to the homeland.

    I decided to collaborate with an animator for the first time to complete Malcolm’s backstory as it would have been difficult to recreate footage from the 1980’s when he previously lived in New York.

    I also had access to a home movie shot on super 8mm by Malcolm’s dad from Ireland in the 1970’s. I then had the aesthetic challenge to combine all of these different elements in the film and make seamless the transitions between each genre. The film provides a more hands on engagement with the research while the written work provided context.

    The film is being presented at Fordham University as part of an Irish Women Writers Symposium 2020.

    The documentary can and of itself be a form of a hybrid film. My previous film Bricks, Beds and Sheep’s Heads, that I shot in Morocco was a narrative film, but audience members experienced it as a true story. There is a sense in the documentary that you are presenting a perceived version of the truth of a situation. In fact, the documentary can cross over into narrative as you dramatize the story for a viewing audience. This allows the filmmaker to blur the boundaries between truth and fiction.

    Through the process of making this film the concept emerged of a cultural misfit and how this is accentuated when a person is required to shift between cultures. In this film I explore the concept of returning to the homeland and possessing an otherness or difference that gives you new insight and perspective on the culture you left behind. This creates a gap of expectation from the inhabitants who never immigrated. How does this aspect shift the perspective of national identity within a given country?

    While this film views a story of returning to the homeland it evokes the complex emotions that are stirred when ghosts from the past haunt us and how memory plays a vital role in this comprehension. While working on the film I coined the term “Memory Pockets” and I found myself combining my own memories with that of the visuals I was choosing. For example, I filmed the sign “Suncroft” this is the village where my own mother lived. These “aha” moments became self-reflexive for me. In fact, that is what the film explored is the ability to exercise self-reflection on ghosts of one’s past. So, I found myself trespassing on my main protagonists’ story as he looked back on his life, I too as an immigrant felt an overlap in the emotional content of the film. It helped to deepen the process and exchange and ultimately tell a more compelling story.

    In participating in telling Malcolm’s story, the film coaxed me to explore the liminality of the spaces in between staying away and returning to the homeland. This “small death” of exile impacts so many individuals and the mystery and wonder that unfolds when you leave and return. Inevitably every choice you make as an individual you gain something, and you lose something, but what creates a bond whether coherent or mysterious can be unspoken and unsaid and in fact transcend culture.

    I gained an understanding of the depth of defining a homeland, I understood that identity is complex and does not only have one dimension, and the ability to exercise self-reflection is a treasure when it comes to a person’s past.

    Trauma and addictions are passed down from one generation to another and it’s complicated for a family to transcend these dysfunctions. In addition, colonisation impacts a culture far beyond the end of the direct period. It can take centuries for a country to recover from being colonized.

    It is complicated how these elements play out in a nation’s history. When Malcom speaks of his grandfather fighting in two World Wars, and how he suffered from PTSD the agony of his destiny is amplified. Through reflection on the themes in the film and engaging with the process of crossing cultural boundaries, I had the opportunity to expand my thinking, experiment with different film aesthetics and hopefully told a compelling story that audiences can relate to on an emotional level. There is a relentless tension between leaving the homeland and returning, and I hope to shed light on the many complex issues surrounding these themes.

    Title: Tumbling Towards Home

    Imelda O’Reilly – Co-Writer/Director

    Year of Completion – January 2020

    Length: 14mins

  • Featured Artist – Emily Mannion

    Painters talk of the temperature of paint. It’s warm. It’s cold. There are colours that complement each other, others that do not. Colour is sensory. It is non-verbal and arguably pre-verbal, and gives us a framework for how to navigate and sublimate our visual surroundings. The grass is green, the ocean is blue, the sun is yellow. 

    To read colour in such an abrupt manner can make it seem static, rational even. Yet an artist can use colour as a strategic or manipulative tool, intentionally misleading and seducing the viewer with the hues and saturation of an artwork. The warmth of colours can be disarming like the hazy, golden yellows of a summer at dusk, or the rosy pinks of  the evening as it shutters to a close. However, with painting, as in life, all is often not exactly what it seems. Much ugliness can be hidden beneath exquisite surfaces. Yet paradox lies at the heart of most art.

    Desire, Melancholy and Loss

    Giorgio Morandi

    In September, I found myself standing before a painting by the Italian artist Giorgio Morandi, Natura Morta con tre tazze (1943), at the Museo Novecento in Milan, experiencing this tension first hand.  In this painting stands three stacked bowls and a jug that looks to have just sidled up beside them.

    The lips between the two forms  connect, barely. A long dark shadowy line throws itself at the edges of where they meet. Its outline highlights the chasm that opens beneath them. It’s a strikingly intimate moment. In the foreground there is a third presence, another bowl which is situated at a remove from the  other two, differentiated by the vibrant red stripe that, like a belt, contains it. An outsider  perhaps? The palette of the paint is neutral, and the brushstrokes minimal. The red stripe is defiant. It penetrates.

    There is an undoubtable tension between these objects, like watching one of Shakespeare’s plays, yet the mystery between them is left to the viewer. As my eyes move across the surface, peeling away the narrative layers I begin to feel the discord within me dissipate. Unmoored, I felt my internal structure begin to break apart. I became every object in that painting, if only briefly – a meditation on desire, melancholy and loss

    Yet transcendence is a temporary state and once again the necessary coldness of reality was upon me. This  distance is now filled with longing. The tears began to gather in my eyes. I waited a little longer and moved to the next painting.

    Sacred Space

    Morandi is regarded as one of the greatest painters of the last century. A mythology has been  built up around him and the very particular process he employed to make his paintings. He safeguarded it with a religious fervour. His studio was a sacred space where he worked  exclusively with the same everyday objects that he placed, assembled, and reordered until the setting and light was just right.

    They were common objects jugs, mugs, bottles, their physical volume and shape lending them certain characteristics. They acted like players on a stage, the drama slowly unfolding before him, each arrangement offering a different narrative. When observing his paintings, one notices how the external signals are combined with his internal fears to create works that are silently directing us through the painful journey of existence. They are empty vessels in an empty landscape.

    Human Frailty

    The pandemic has thrown into light our human frailty, our need for connection, our  surroundings and lived spaces. It has brought a metaphysical awareness to the things with which we surround ourselves. The domestic is now a sacred space and the quotidian is kingmaker.

    Like Morandi, this sphere of the domestic is where I choose to situate my work. I create narrative vignettes culled from personal history, literature, music and film. At times these scenes seem banal, in others absurd. They are purely imagined spaces that are vague and elusive, offering fragmentary impressions of wonder, beauty, loneliness, and dread – and the duality that exists within us all.

    My painting is both a language and alchemy. It is uncontainable, and oftentimes unpredictable with each work following its own logic. I use oil paint in a manner that reflects the sensibility of the oil itself. The surfaces of the painting have a diverse, formal vocabulary. At times I apply it with a quick, gestural abandon with the material sliding across the  surface. At other times the paint is applied dry or diluted, methodically building layers and light through a process of application and wiping back.

    Erasure is part of everything. A private performance where the traces are left behind on the canvas – residues of hair and dirt are solidified in time compressed.

    Moments Between

    I aim to depict points in time where nothing much happens, and anxiety builds as our agency is suspended. Dramatic interludes are left to one side in favour of those moments between. We are deprived of that cathartic release. The scenes are at once familiar and yet there is a strangeness to them, an eeriness. The interiors are populated with objects, both uncanny and transcendent: a glove; an insect under a glass; a broken egg; a curtain shimmers; things are only half revealed.

    Animals and figures sometimes appear yet they are more present in their absence. The objects seem to exist independent of our gaze. They carry on without us when left to themselves. They are ‘still lives’ in the conventional, historical sense. But now they have become autonomous figures. They too have become the players on the stage.

    It is true that we cannot experience pleasure without first knowing pain; that we contain both true and false selves. One thing can be seen more clearly in relation to another. These polarities provide us with perspective and also uncertainty.

    The psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott said that ‘artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to  communicate and the desire to hide.’ The human condition is not a paradox to be solved but rather one to be lived. We should embrace the shadows within.

    Images 1-6:

    ‘Objects of desire’ 40 x 50cm, 2020.

    ‘False Gods’ 120 x 150cm, 2019.

    ‘St. Lucy’, 25 x 35cm, 2019.

    ‘Sunglasses’ 31 x 39cm, 2019.

    ‘You can have it all’ 140 x 170cm, 2020.

    ‘Persona’, 120 x 150cm, 2020.

    Feature Image: Andrea Wyner

    Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emilymannion1/?hl=en