Collaborative Arts Ireland on-line Exhibition : Watercolour Flower Cards

An invite to collaborate?

An artist pal sent out an invite to painters to do a painting or drawing each week for a year for a collaboration.

I felt excited to be part of a collective like this. About ten artists from all over Ireland were involved and we shared our work on Facebook each day. It was inspiring to see how our work progressed and we had a very fine on-line exhibition among ourselves at the year end.

52 Watercolour paintings of flowers

Early on I decided to do small pieces, as I knew that doing anything big would have to grapple with major life events, as they tend to pop up now and again!

It was early inthe year, and we were observing the warming up of the earth after the winter and regeneration of plant life, I put my energies into painting flowers

Most of the plants I painted I found in our garden. Others were inspired by photos I had taken previously. It was amazing to find quite a few flowers growing in what looked like a garden still very much asleep.

I enjoyed painting these little images and connecting with the plants.

I asked that a word would come to me as I worked quietly to describe their essence.

After I had completed these little paintings, I felt they deserved a life of their own.

So, eventually after experimenting with many ideas for printing them to their best advantage and trawling through the Internet for ideas for packaging, I got to work and made up packets of Inspirational Flower Cards.

There are as many ways to use them as we can think of !

Use them as divination cards, give them away, be inspired to connect with your own creativity and create art pieces from them, use them to connect with nature and lots more.

From time to time, I have reprints done and add them to my website.

Enjoy !

Doggie artworks

I love dogs, and this year I have been working on some doggie images. Here are a few..this one is of Sammy, my friend Jennie's Westie.... It is done with chalk pastel on Ingres paper, - I like the dry, chalky , matt, feeling of working in this medium. It can be dusty and messy to work with , but all this is forgiven, as these pastels are so easy to transport. "Boxer puppy", acrylic on canvas 30cms x 20cms Sometimes, a painting paints itself without much effort from the artist , and this is what happened here , - I was surprised to see this wee dog looking back at me. Some times this happens me when i work with animals. This is a mixed media work on canvas of Pucci, a much adored 2 year old lab. Not a great photo. This work is on a large canvas ( A1) size , and is worked up using acrylic, pastel and inks. Above is "Valentine", a mixed media on canvas. He is a rescue dog , an American bulldog crossbreed who was lucky t

"Sense of Place" Art Exhibition in Tallaght University Hospital Dublin. June - September 2019.

Some weeks ago, I was honoured to be asked to prepare a hashtag body of artworks for hashtag exhibition by the family of the late Maeve Doyle. Maeve left a vast hashtag collection of hashtag paintings, hashtag drawings and hashtag poems, expressing a wish that her hashtag artworks be exhibited further afield. " Meeting of the Waters in Avoca". Watercolour. 30cms x 20cms Born in 1958 to a German refugee mother and an Irish father, Maeve was the youngest of their four children. Most of her life was spent living along the coastline of south Dublin, from which she derived much of her inspiration. She studied Fine Art Painting in IADT, known then in the 70’s as Eblana Avenue. She was a gentle and sensitive young woman, who was a true working artist expressing herself in a free and fluid manner through her several media. I was delighted to find the perfect hashtag art venue for her work in hashtag # tallaghtuniversityhospital , which is the National Cent

Community Arts - Irish Rugby Legends Portraits Exhibition, September 2011.

The enthusiasm for this exhibition came from Terry Connaughton, the director of Ranelagh Arts.. One of my all time memories of Terry will be of him - sitting huddled up, beside an electric fire, doing a days work, in layers of coats and scarves, in the depths of our coldest winter in my living memory ( remember night time temperatures of -17c , and daytime ones of -5c ) last winter, in Ranelagh Arts Centre. Terry arrived to the centre, everyday, - day after day, week after week , on the coldest , bleakest, most unfriendly days..and was often was the only one in there, working away..working towards his vision of RA being a vibrant, community hub of all the artforms. The Ranelagh Arts building was nothing like it is these days, there was a lot to do...still is ..and will be..and the future of it is uncertain. His all time hero ( since childhood) has been Jack Kyle, who has often been described as Ireland's best ever rugby player. He asked artist , Declan Gould

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