Before I start I want to thank all of you who responded to my last piece on Barry and Cinnie. I have never had a response like it. Messages are still coming in, over a fortnight later. I have been so moved by all of you, how the story of that friendship touched you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I can’t respond to you individually as there have been dozens and dozens of messages, but please know that all of your responses meant so much to me, and I am so grateful that you took the time to write.
Today’s blog is altogether more me-centric! Situation normal I suppose. It’s about fulfilling an ambition, and about life being long, and how good things come to those who wait.
It’s all in my YouTube video here – https://youtu.be/KFsZjanU0HM – so I will try not to repeat myself too much, but maybe some of you hate watching videos of beautiful gardens and sunny weather, and would prefer a nice quiet read – or maybe both. I will try not to be too flowery in my language here…but it’ll be hard, because I feel like I have stumbled on a new passion, and look what happened the last time? When I came across urban sketching by chance back in 2012 it led to a fulfilling career, a decade and more steeped in beauty in a dazzle of and line and colour and a million friendships I never saw coming.
I’m talking about starting my new adventure in oil paint. I have dreamt of making big, bold canvases forever. Life, and kids, got in the way, but those things have shifted now to make room for other things.
I discovered a course in plein air oil painting a few weeks ago that I could actually attend, as I was free that week, it was to be held near my mum’s house, involved no effort of travelling whatsoever and, most importantly, was to be conducted by one of my top three favourite painters in Ireland, Dave West. I only discovered Dave’s work last month (which seems incredible to me) when I was working at Mount Congreve in Co. Waterford. I had heard of him, of course, but I am very self-obsessed so it takes quite a jolt for me to actually “see” someone else’s work. Dave loves to paint landscape, in God’s fresh air: you guys know I have the same love of painting outdoors, but to date I have only ever used water media outdoors. When I met Dave, and looked at his work, I knew he would be my tutor, should I ever get the chance. I didn’t expect that chance to come up so quickly.
Dave’s approach is very classical and methodical, I think, not that I should presume to know much about his approach after just four days. His work looks, at first glance, very convincing – you’re really “there” – and the light is always a masterclass in technique, but when you peer a bit more closely you see that the marks are gestural and loose. Looking at Dave’s work reminds me of a similarly paradoxical experience at a Lucien Freud exhibition in the Tate Gallery once: only up close could you see that these hyper-realistic works were in fact loose and fresh and crazy. To me, therein lies real mastery. It’s only when you have truly mastered your tool that you make it look easy, flowing, natural. When you have achieved that mastery, you can experience an ethereal out-of-body feeling when you draw or paint, that “you” are not really at the wheel. That might be why it’s so addictive…who can touch God and not want to go back for more?
So, here’s what happened during the course.
Monday 7th July
It’s sunny, warm and windy. I have no idea what I am doing. This is a new feeling, as if I have found myself in a physics convention, or a gathering of orchid-fanciers. I have my kit, cobbled together from the list Dave has sent the participants. Paint, Sansodor, linseed oil, brushes, canvas boards. Some of it’s new, some borrowed from my sister, some of it’s very old, found in the backs of drawers in my house. There’s a shirt my husband has designated for gardening, and a few not-old shirts I tell myself I won’t get paint on, but do.
We’ve just arrived at Powerscourt and we’re at our first meeting place, the Walled Garden. It’s manicured to perfection. Dave tells us to start with a thumbnail sketch in black and white, but I know so little about oil painting that I don’t realise he doesn’t mean black and white, but a range of greys mixed from ultramarine and burnt sienna, plus or minus titanium white. I am champing at the bit, as I see all kinds of things around me I know I wouldn’t stand a chance in capturing in watercolour. Hot pink petunias that I feel must be insisted upon in a way that brooks no discussion. I squeeze paint onto the palette of the pochade box Dave has lent me. It’s dark, opaque and mysterious, compared with the innocent little cubes of colour I am used to. I paint two stone urns of petunias in black and white, and the values might be okay, but the paint feels wayward to me. At lunchtime I toddle off to eat my packed lunch of tinned fish (I live with a protein fascist, my 23-year-old son Paddy, who has agreed to include me on his weight-loss crusade, on condition that I do not break ranks and go maverick. “Please don’t waste your time and mine,” he has told me, so there isn’t a carb in sight in my lunchbox), and sketch the dramatic vista from a bench on the other side of the hedge surrounding the café terrace.
For some reason I use pink ink, and it feels like a mistake, so I deepen the shaded side in black ink, but it’s worse.
In the afternoon I attempt to paint my subject in full colour – I’m going to say Technicolor. That’s how garish it is. But I have a lot of shouting in colour to get out of my system, after decades in watercolour.
I don’t really like the result, and I am really surprised by all the compliments flying around. Then again, people are very nice.
Tuesday 8th July
It’s warm and overcast, and the light is exactly how I like it: flat. I do love a shadow every bit as much as the next man, but I love the…flatness today.
Dave starts his demo. He shows us a few paintings he’s done recently. There’s a calm, quiet scene of a tidal river flowing though a Welsh village, with reflections that are the proverbial limpid pools, in translucent olive. There’s a hilltop in the Mourne Mountains that evokes something by an intrepid 19th-century Swiss explorer. There’s a painting of a dilapidated house in Connemara, one face glowing with sunlight, flooding sea and scene with gold. No photos can do these paintings justice. I want to possess all three. The last time I had that deep desire to own a painting was when I saw one by my sister Fiona, of orange crayfish and a blue and white enamel dish, and she gave it to me, being the extremely generous soul she is. To buy Dave’s work I may have to wait for a windfall.
This time I follow Dave’s demo, because (a) I like it and (b) I know it won’t be too much of a challenge for me, which I need because I know so little…see above. It’s a good call and the piece goes well. I include Dave in the scene because I feel the need to pay him tribute, like one of those over-keen fans who send drawings of their hero to them, and because I know you were dying to ask, YES, I have been gifted portraits of me by fans, including a metal figurine of Róisín Curé – beat that!
I show my painting to my brother, full of pride.
“Hmm,” he says.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I say. “I can only presume it’s because you’re so used to being blown away by my normally exceptionally high standard that you’re momentarily non-plussed by its marginally less-brilliant status.”
“Maybe,” he says. “That mountain should be much lighter. You see, the atmosphere causes the hill to be lighter…”
I am incredulous. He knows I have a first class honours degree and a master’s in science. But will an older brother ever truly accept that? He, on the other hand, has no such State-awarded certificate stating prowess in matters scientific. However, though it pains me to say it, I realise he is right. I should have made the hill lighter. To make matters worse, Dave himself had gone to great lengths to remind us of that lighter colour in the distant hill.
I join my family for dinner on the deck, bathed in warm evening sun. My brother has made something amazing, as he always does. He raises a glass in a toast.
“To the trees being gone!” he says: my mother has had the tree surgeons in to chop her neighbour’s tree down, and she has her evening sun back. Clink!
“To Mum’s eyes!” he says: my mother has had laser surgery that seems to have gone well. Clink!
“To me being an oil painter!” I say, glass aloft. Silence!
Wednesday 9th July
I’m getting really cocky now and think I am killing it in oil. Rather than paint Dave’s subject of the rose garden, I go solo, choosing a beautiful scene of a formal water-lily pond with statues of Greek thinkers at one end (or maybe not, I don’t actually go too close). Sadly, as is usually the case, I am overconfident, and my work is really awful. The consensus is that it’s fine, but that just proves to me that no one knows anything about anything. I genuinely can’t find the photo of it in my files, but it’s in my YouTube video if you’d like to see it.
A group of three women approach the statues and one reads aloud a plaque.
“This garden is erected in honour of my mother,” she reads in a Southern drawl. She turns to her friends. “Do you think my son would build a garden like this in my honour?”
“Just tell him his inheritance depends on it,” says her friend in an equally sardonic drawl.
“My son would,” says a third, “on Minecraft.”
I like these women.
The problem with my painting is that I have bitten off more than I can chew, and I have paid the price. It’s pretty hot today, and the sun has not disappeared behind a cloud all day. I throw myself down on the grass in the shade under a tree. I fling my arms wide and take my glasses off, and allow them to fall out of the unfurling fingers of my hand. I close my eyes for a minute, but I know I should stab at my painting and try to make it look better.
Back at the canvas I realise I have left my glasses on the grass. I turn around to see someone being sick under the tree, exactly where I was lying. I realise it’s one of our class members – a lady who has had too much sun and is paying the price. But my glasses! I don’t want vomit-covered glasses! I steal a furtive glance to see if they’re in the firing line. They’re not – which means they’re under her. In that instant I decide to become nurse, in order to maximise my chances of retrieving my glasses from underneath the poor lady. Almost immediately I recognise this as the selfish and calculating sentiment it is, and despite my baser instinct I am actually nice to the lady, giving her water and, I don’t know, doing other let’s-get-you-cool stuff. But I am still waiting for my chance to swipe my glasses from under her. Come on – you would too! Other people have joined in by now, and the cavalry has arrived, in a little buggy the estate uses to get around. The lady is desperately ill and I still can’t administer the subtle shove I need to get those specs. Then I have a thought. I put my hand to my face…where my glasses are sitting on my nose.
The lady soon recovers, and is collected by her daughter. I am driving a sweet young Italian woman, a fellow participant on the course called Viktoria, to and from Powerscourt each day: she’s a jovial girl who responds to my attempts at funny stories. When I pick her up to bring her back to Bray I tell her the story of the Selfish Woman And The Spectacles and she hoots with laughter.
Thursday 10th July
I am furious – spitting with fury – that this wonderful week has to come to an end. Dave is just lovely, a warm and generous teacher, and very funny with it, and I have been entertained and educated by turn over the last few days.
After yesterday’s confidence-sapping events, I am taking no chances. After Dave’s demo – the house seen from the bottom of the garden – I go to find the scene I like, of some beautiful trees along the path back up to the house, and I make a thumbnail sketch in watercolour in my little A6 sketchbook.
I spend the day painting, happy as Larry, trying this time to do as Dave has instructed. I may not kill it this time, but at least I know what I have done right and what wrong. All in the YouTube if you’re interested in the results.
A woman wanders down the path, having walked past the mosaicked terraces, the buxus-bordered roses of red and white, the stone fountains shooting sparkling diamond jets into the sky, the perfectly manicured walled garden.
“The garden isn’t higgledy-piggledy,” she says. “Someone put a little thought into it.”
Four o’clock comes much too fast. It’s time to go home, but I feel a physical reluctance to leave this paradise.
I am at the very start of my oil journey. I don’t care that I look like an amateur – I am one. I remind myself of what I say to my students all the time – that it’s just ink under the bridge that’s the difference, and that it’s looking honestly and carefully, and knowing a few tricks, that will get you over the line. And above all, to enjoy the journey.
Friday 11th July
Still, the next day I draw my mother reading her book, to remind myself that I am not completely crap at drawing.
Again, I cannot remember why I used pink ink, but that sketch is exactly like my mother. Whew.
Saturday 12th July
It’s HOT. I go back to Powerscourt Gardens first thing in the morning, just as the doors open, to get some footage for my YouTube video. I get the video in the bag and decide to have another go at the lily pond, in an attempt to salvage some pride. I fail, It’s much, much too hot, and I am in danger of falling into a faint like the poor lady of the other day. Now wouldn’t I look stupid if that happened? And no nearby Good Samaritan to gently rub my back and give me the very water from her flask, either.
I give up. I have had enough humbling for one week.
I head to the beach for a swim, find it impossible to park, and head back to my mother’s house.
Sunday 13th July
My mother and I go to the beach together. I change into my swimsuit, and notice a faint smear of yellow paint on the inside of the costume, testament to four days of swimming after a messy oil painting class. This hot Sunday beside my mother and her good little dog I swim, sketch, swim, sketch. It is heaven.
I drive home to Galway on Sunday evening, a newly-minted oil painter.
Clink!
Acknowledgments
Thanks are due to Dave West: you’ve helped me more than I can say.
To the Schoolhouse for Art in Enniskerry: you are the best people to work for, and with, and I am proud to be associated with you.
And to the Powerscourt Estate, and the warm hospitality shown us by the lovely staff and management.
