Bullersten
Acrylic on Canvas
96 x 122 cm
2001
I began this series by taking some pebbles into the studio, and attaching them to card. I took these as my starting point before drawing the islands. I just looked at how the light was shaping them, and how they changed in character as the light moved round the studio. Then I adapted the idea to the islands outside, stripping them down to the very basics, and seeing what was left. I look at the island outside, Inishmacsaint, as a tonal exercise and just pare the shapes right down. The three things I am interested in are form, texture, and colour, and combining these in both my sculpture and painting.
One notion I'm interested in here as well, comes from the Scandinavian notion of the Bullersten. This is used to describe a boulder in a stream that produces sound when it is moved. Everything has a frequency, and if you can tap into that frequency then you can begin to decode what that particular thing is about. So the lines around the forms are picking up that notion of frequency, and also of scarring, or if we think of the island idea, of water marks or waves. These are further things which add to the vocabulary, translated on to the canvas.
Blue Water
Acrylic on Linen
96 x 122 cm
2003
By filling almost all of the canvas with a single form, I'm trying to express the reality of the big stones you find lying on the lough shore. You look at them - big, heavy, brown-black - like incredibly solid pieces of peat. I'm trying to convey the hardness of the thing, the beauty of it in terms of its form and colour, and then flattening all that out and hanging it on a light structure, a piece of canvas. It's a sculptural thing as much as a painterly thing, a deliberate attempt to convey mass.
White Island
Acrylic on Canvas
50 x 60 cms
2003
There is an island on Lough Erne, Co. Fermanagh which has ancient religious significance, and that gives the title to this painting. The circle of magenta is a device to energise the white form in the centre. I am trying to create a white form that resonates.
Orange and Grey
Acrylic on Canvas
96 x 122 cm
2002
Sometimes when the lough is low the stones around the island dry out. They are usually quite black and shiny, but when they dry they become a sort of bleached white. The areas around the orange forms represent that. However, this is an abstract composition. The forms relate primarily to one another, not to something in the landscape.
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