On my way to Ireland

by Laureen on February 15, 2012

St. Stephen's Green, Dublin (Photo: Derek Speirs for The New York Times)

Some things I’ve learned this week:

  • You can’t carry oil paints on a plane, even in checked luggage.
  • The Regina Airport staff are helpful and kind as they tell you about an un-staffed desk with forms and Ziploc bags just outside airport security that promises to courier your prohibited items back home.
  • If your Air Canada flight from Toronto is late leaving and you only have 1-3/4 hours to connect at Heathrow for Dublin, you are never going to make it. And neither Air Canada’s  flight attendants nor so-called Heathrow customer service staff  are going to be the tiniest bit helpful to you or any of the dozen or so other travellers in the same fix.
  • You can use the time between landing and the next available flight three hours later to accept and move on, and Heathrow’s Internet services to cancel your plans for the next two days and make new ones.
  • Which will allow you to replace the banned items so you have something to paint with.

I am on my way to the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, Annaghmakerrig, Newbliss, Co. Monaghan, Ireland, called Ireland’s premiere creative artist residency for all types of professional artists. It was created when Irish theatre director and playwright Tyrone Guthrie gave his 11-bedroom family home and estate to artists to be used as a retreat. Wikipedia says, “In a tranquil, beautiful setting amid the lakes and drumlins of County Monaghan, everything the eye can see is private in the gated 500-acre (2.0 km2) fully wooded estate. In the ‘Big House’ (as it is affectionately known) everything is provided for, including delicious food much of which comes from their own organic gardens. The dinner each evening at 7 is always a buzz of chat and discussion that is a welcome interruption to the strong creative work vibe that surrounds the centre. Each bedroom includes writing desk and a chair and has its own charm and character with a selection of books, paintings and a view.” I have wanted to go to the Centre for years, and in September my application to do so was accepted.

I thought I had the trip all worked out. Arrive in Dublin mid-afternoon on Tuesday, collect a rental car, and spend two days easing out of jet lag while exploring Ireland’s southeast coast, where I’ve never been, before a comfortably-timed drive back to Dublin Airport and a Friday bus to Annaghmakerrig. The oil paints and airplanes changed all that, and instead I have a city holiday with shopping and art galleries and a new haircut and replacing the paints. Travel is always an adventure.

Some other things I’ve learned:

  • People in every possible circumstance are kind and helpful when you tell them where you are and what you’d need. Desk clerk at Bewley’s Hotel Dublin Airport, driver of the hotel shuttle bus, sales staff at K & M Evans art supplies, cashier at Dunne’s Stores, you made my day.
  • What you lose on the swings you make up on the roundabouts. I will pay for one night’s guest house night that couldn’t be cancelled for free, but I won’t pay for the car.
  • Strangers are just friends you haven’t met yet. When I emailed my regrets, the second night’s guest house hostess responded, “What a shame but I had a feeling that might be the case, no harm done. Hope you find the sanctuary you require when you finally reach your destination, God bless and enjoy your airborne St Valentine’s Day. Have a wonderful and productive time in the TG centre!” Caitriona of Cuasnog, may you live long and prosper.
  • As Steven Pressfield says in The War of Art, a professional ships. Andrea at Peter Mark hair salon in Grafton Street gave me the best  haircut I’ve had in 20 years, never minding whether she will ever see this customer again, because that is what she does.
  • St. Stephen’s Green park in Dublin has flowers blooming in February.

The inspiration I cooked up last week waits in my luggage. I hold faith that Irish rain water and a good stir will be all it needs to rise.

 

{ 14 comments }

What makes inspiration?

by Laureen on February 9, 2012

Studio at work

In my studio today I’m making inspiration. It isn’t a mystical process. It’s more like making bread. Workmanlike. Yeast, water, flour, seasoning. Maybe it’s more like making bread without a recipe. How much flour? Unbleached? Whole grain? How much of each? Now, mix. Too soft. More flour? Which kind? Mix again. Knead. Rise. Punch down. Knead again. Rise again. Bake. For how long? How hot should the oven be? If the bread isn’t good, I could throw it out and start over. But oh, all that work and time! Never mind. Begin again.

Last summer I had an idea about the way a particular feeling might look. It was just a glimpse, caught in the back of my eye. Not knowing quite what to do with it, I let it be, thinking about it sometimes but doing no more with it than that. By December it seemed to tell me what shape it might want. Then the trick is to turn the idea into a painting.

When I begin a new piece I set up the thing I will end up describing. I take its picture. I manipulate the results in my computer, and through that process I arrive at an image that is the beginning of the work. The painting is never the photograph, or the thing I set up. Or the image I originally had that quick look at.

And I wish that arriving at any image was as easy as saying it.

So here I am, placing objects on a board, setting lights, moving the board around, trying different angles and different ways of fastening and more and different lights. My first attempts at showing what was in my imagination look like nothing. No rhythm, balance, interest, life. No meaning. Move the objects. Re-arrange the proportions. Move the lights. Once more time.

Eventually something begins to emerge. It doesn’t look like what I glimpsed in the summer, but it looks like something. Fiddle, photograph, re-arrange again, fiddle, photograph. Now I see something I didn’t expect to. Out of the new vision I have a new idea. Begin again. The first image might work. So might the next one. The one after that – I can hardly breathe for possibility.

I thought this might be two hours’ work. Four hours later I realize I have only started. By this time the process doesn’t seem so workmanlike. Though it certainly feels like work. It feels as as if through the exercise of vision, concentration, will, and sheer belief, I’m beginning to make something where before there was nothing at all.

Not that this small beginning  means I will go from here to making art. That’s the next leap of faith. Between now and then this pixelated representation of an idea will go through my computer, a photo printing process, translation into drawing on a board, and the application to the drawing of oil paint using flat hogs’ hair brushes, by someone who often feels she has neither ever done this before nor any idea what to do next. And who can fail completely at any step of the way.

But today all that is ahead. Today I’m making inspiration.

What makes inspiration for you?

{ 4 comments }

The Beach

February 1, 2012

There’s a painting on my easel  that’s been there too long. 40 graduate students in the class in library and research skills that I teach for University of Maryland University College are waiting for grading and feedback on their last major assignment in the course. I’m too far behind in my Goods and Services Tax [...]

Read the full article →

Snowy Owls, Belonging

January 25, 2012

I’ve been counting snowy owls.  It isn’t an organized or recorded count; it’s just become a kind of game. For some uncertain reason, perhaps to do with birth rates and food supplies in their normal far north, snowy owls are appearing in unprecedented numbers in southern Saskatchewan this winter. And once you know they’re out [...]

Read the full article →

Artist at Work – Cora Macaulay

January 18, 2012

The artists who exhibit with Grasslands Gallery are some of the most talented and inspiring people I know. This occasional series introduces them and their work.   When I first met Cora Macaulay I didn’t think of her as an artist. I thought of her as my best friend’s mom. But the friend I’m talking [...]

Read the full article →

← Previous Entries