'Road to the City' - study for painting
Graphite on paper
(2009)
'Untitled #1'
Etch primer, metallic and car spray paints on aluminium
(2010)
'Untitled #2'
Etch primer, metallic and car spray paints on aluminium
(2010)
Well this would have to be the first post of my first blog. I suppose I'll begin by describing the old before I get on to the new. As the idea of diaristic blogs make me a little sick, I will try and keep this brief and to the point.
I used to be a painter, mostly for my own sake. I never painted anything to please other people, it was only ever important for me to paint for myself. So now I find myself in my final year of University studying a degree in painting, saying goodbye to it all - the main reason being that it had just stopped being instinctive. When I was younger I would sit in class and cover every square inch of my maths books and science texts with scribbles and plans and joke poems and stories - it was a way of recording the active part of my mind. It was impulsive. Since my formal art education began however, the enjoyment and thrill I had once had at seeing a plan unfold from sketch to finished work has diminished, even if the quality has increased. It has been like the difference between being good at something you enjoyed once because it gave you a certain freedom or sense of self, and having to do that same thing, but for other people watching expectantly from behind a pane of one-way glass - there is a performative side to painting at art college that puts unnecessary pressure on the painter, which for me at least, sapped all the fun out.
So I record here for posterity's sake the last images I have of the last work on painting that I have done. And due to a pathetically comical situation involving a tragically incompetent Donegal-based courier company, I no longer have any records of any work I have done since I was a teenager. Certainly a time for new beginnings.
