Exhibition in Dunamaise Arts Centre, Portlaoise

Back in early December I met with Michelle de Forge, director of Dunamaise Arts Centre and Nick who is the centre's technician. We confirmed dates for installation, exhibition opening and possible dates for a talk. I'll be in the gallery to install work on the 11th, 12th and 13th of January with the opening taking place on the 14th at 7pm. The show will run I think for about 6 weeks and for the 27th of February, towards the end of the exhibition, Abbeyleix Further Education Centre are organizing a symposium. Several of us who have previously studied there will be talking about our experience since leaving. I finished in 2005 before moving to Galway so it's just about 10 years.

A Solitary Mountain or Old Ruin, 2015

I'm running with the title of Beneath the Dock Leaf  for this show too as it's mostly the same works from that body of work but I think this is the last show that will be under that title. After this exhibition I will be starting a new project, it will be focused on the same theme and style but I hope to push it on slightly, introduce new characters, which means building new props and possibly scale up the work.

To be About on November Eve, 2015

Leaving the Dublin Studio

I've had to move out of the studio at A4 Sounds. The reason being that I've been so busy around home that I was getting time to use it. Just with travelling between Dublin and Laois, if I wasn't on the bus early the day was gone and that was that. I have a couple of weeks left on the lease but I'm working from Mountrath again. I was only managing one or two days a week in the Dublin studio at least this way I can work on paintings whenever I'm home.

I'll stay in contact with the artists in the studio and hopefully manage to get back at some stage but for now I'm happy enough to be working back out in the country again and I'm currently working on a fairly large scale commission that I was asked to do during my MFA end of year show.

New Residency in Iceland

I've been accepted onto a new residency in Iceland for November 2016. I'll be working at Here Creative Centre in Stodvarfjordur. I'm looking forward to going back and after doing a 3 month residency during the summer in 2012 I decided to apply for a winter residency this time around. It's also on the Eastern side of Iceland. It's just for a month but I'm hoping to possibly have a small exhibition at some stage before I come home.





I'm hoping to use this opportunity to incorporate Icelandic folklore into my work but I'm not going to concern myself too much with tying it in immediately with my current practice, I'll wait and see what happens and play a little bit.

New Studio in Dublin

I have just moved into a new studio in Dublin. I signed up for a membership with A4 Sounds a few weeks ago and got a studio last week. I'm delighted to be back based in Dublin but with the residency in August and the exhibition last month I didn't want to break up my work time with moving. I found working on my own over the summer tough after being part of a busy atmosphere at Emmett House so I'm happy to be part of a group environment again.

There's a good number of multidisciplinary artists based in the building and there's always a lot of activity around. I'm hoping to be back painting this week but with a few small jobs to get done I'll just be working on a piece that I started about three weeks ago. It was originally intended to go into Beneath the Dock Leaf but I wasn't happy with it and restarted it the week after the exhibition opening.

No title yet but this is the newest painting so far.

I'll have a profile page on the A4 Sounds website soon so once that's up I'll post a link.

Q & A with Patience Brewster

I was contacted during the week by Marietta Gregg who is Marketing Director at Patience Brewster and I was asked if I would take part in a Q & A. It's part of the Patience Brewster Artist Appreciation Month project and they will be posting links on their social media to the blog posts that they receive. I was delighted to take part, the 5 questions and answers follow.

(1) As a child, do you recall a significant moment when you felt truly affected or inspired by any particular artwork or artist?

I don’t think so, growing up in a rural area in Ireland I didn’t have easy access to art galleries and I lived a fair distance from Dublin and so I was 18 when I first visited an art gallery. There was a show titled Northern Nocturnes in the National Gallery of Ireland in 2005. This exhibition consisted of paintings by Dutch and Flemish artists and I remember being completely captivated with some of the Rembrandt paintings on display, I had never seen them in real life or outside of books before that. As a child I spent a lot of time drawing and I remember winning a trophy in a local art competition when I was 5. Drawing was just something that I always enjoyed doing and it went from there.

(2)As an artist, what do you hope to convey with your work?

At the moment the focus of my work is superstition and folklore. My goal with this current body of work is to portray Irish folk figures, such as leprechauns, pucas and, at some point the banshee, in a more realistic fashion. I’ve painting them as figures in more contemporary attire, such as hoodies and tracksuits instead of the traditional tuxedo and bowler hat. I’m not trying to redesign these spirits but rather reinterpret them without the element of parody and cliché.

The fact that nobody really believes in them anymore was also something that interested me. They are effectively unemployed and due to this they appear to have very little going on in their lives, the leprechaun is no longer needed to mend shoes and the banshee is not needed as a warning of death. They have all been replaced with rationality which I think is a pity.

 Leaves, Oil on Canvas, 55cm x 35cm, Pat Byrne, 2015

The New Baal Fires, Oil on Canvas, 57cm x 40cm, Pat Byrne, 2015

(3)What memorable responses have you had to your work?

I received really positive feedback in June this year towards the current paintings. It was the first time they had been installed for display and it was my MFA Graduate exhibition at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. My work almost sold out, I only brought home one painting out of the installed body of work which I was really surprised at because before that show I only sold 2 pieces. Also during this show 8 of us had our work reviewed by artist and art critic James Merrigan. That was great and one of the most memorable responses that I have had towards my work because in the paint department we all would have been following James’ website Billion Journal.

The Honeycomb Project was another project I was involved with in 2011. It was a collaborative light installation that 5 of us worked on for The Electric Picnic music festival and we got a lot of positive feedback. That was the first time that someone might have been talking about a piece of work and I was able to say I was one of the artists who worked on it.  

The Honeycomb Project, MDF, Plastic Bottles and LED Lights, Laura Byrne, Pat Byrne, Karen Hendy, Helena Malone and Vera McEvoy, 2011

(4)What is your dream project?

I don’t think that I have ever really thought about what would be my dream project. I think at the moment my dream project would be to exhibit alongside some of my friends that I have met along the way. During my undergraduate studies at Galway – Mayo Institute of Technology and postgraduate studies at the National College of Art and Design I’ve been really lucky to meet some really great people and to become friends with them. As for my own work, I would like to work towards a show outside Ireland at some point and continue working in a similar way to what I’m doing now and I think another Icelandic residency would be good too, I have applied for one recently and I’m waiting to hear back so hopefully it’ll be good news.

The Result of Solitude, Oil on Canvas, 36cm x 25cm, Pat Byrne, 2015

(5)What artists, of any medium, do you admire? (Famous or not!)

Kevin Cosgrove, Kehinde Wiley and Jeremy Geddes are three figurative painters that I really admire. Even though my work is nothing like Fiona Rae’s I have always really liked her paintings too and how she speaks about them. Niamh O Malley and Ailbhe Bí Bhriain are 2 more Irish artists whose work I like. Painting features in Niamh’s work alongside video and installation and although Ailbhe works with video I think there’s a very strong painterly quality about her work.     

Links

Patience Brewster Website

Patience Brewster Facebook

Patience Brewster Twitter

Some of the New Work

I have some of the new paintings documented and uploaded on this post. I haven't uploaded them to my website yet though, there's more of a glare on some of them than I thought originally so I'm going to re-shoot a few of them.

Some of the newer pieces were much more still life based work and focus more on trinkets that are sometimes associated with the figures of folklore. They also served as a way to introduce new figures to the work at a later stage.

Some of the paintings proved more difficult than others to photograph, I won't need to document all of them again but there are 3 of the 5 pieces shown here that I'll re-take. The bottom painting, To Sing or Whistle, is gone into the Laois County Collection.

A Silver Shilling or Golden Ashes, Oil on Canvas, 20cm x 17cm, 2015

Merely on a Spree, Oil on Canvas, 26cm x 18cm, 2015

Possessor of Great Riches, Oil on Canvas, 34cm x 28cm, 2015

Red, Oil on Canvas, 17cm x 16cm, 2015

To Sing or Whistle, Oil on Canvas, 56cm x 41cm, 2015

'Beneath the Dock Leaf' Installation Shots

Beneath the Dock Leaf finished yesterday. I was very happy with the feedback on the work, this was the first exhibition of the work since I finished the MFA in June and it was the first solo show since Excursion last October. There was also more paintings on show than during my MFA show, in the old Frawley's building I installed 9 pieces but at The Hyde Bridge Gallery I hung 14 works. There were several new paintings that I worked on over the summer but a big difference with these newer paintings was that I have been working in a space on my own so there wasn't anyone to ask for feedback and had to trust my own judgement. I was told too that there was a big attendance at the exhibition for Culture Night.

I really enjoyed working in The Hyde Bridge Gallery. It's a really great gallery consisting of 2 rooms and a corridor space. The 2 rooms contain a fireplace each. This prompted me to work on 2 pieces specifically for this exhibition and while I had both on display only was installed to interact with a fireplace. There's one wall in the first room that is almost entirely made up of a window and in the second room are 2 windows situated right in the corner providing both rooms with strong natural light. Between the windows, fireplaces and the fact that the gallery is made up of 3 spaces provided an interesting challenge during installation, making me consider which paintings were going together in which rooms and also how one room would lead into the next while trying to avoid very literal narratives.

Fairy and Folktales of Ireland by W.B Yeats served as a source of research for my work and as The Hyde Bridge Gallery is part of The Yeats Society Building in Sligo it was a fitting venue given the theme of my current work.

I meant to get a video of the exhibition but my camera wasn't charged, I'll do it for the next show. I was contact by The Dunamaise Arts Centre in Portlaoise on the 4th of September about the possibility of exhibiting Beneath the Dock Leaf there sometime in 2016 so I'll be speaking with them soon about that.

I'll be posting documentation of the individual works over the next few weeks on my website and adding new pieces to the body of work.