Dia de los Muertos

I'm doing a Day of the Dead class with my TY group tomorrow in school. I love Mexican culture and their vibrant art tradition and I wanted to take a different approach to the usual Hallowe'en themed art done in schools. I also think there's something a lot more edgy and exciting about the Day of the Dead art than the traditional Hallowe'en images we get here.

I've featured two female artists here, Sylvia Ji and the wonderful ZSO. Sylvia Ji uses the traditional Catarina image in her work a lot, ZSO dipped her toe into Mexican art with these fab Calavera, I love them all!

Very unseasonably I did a few calavera back in August for a friends birthday, great fun to paint, hopefully the pupils will enjoy it tomorrow.

Posters from A Brief Exchange

So i've been blogging a lot about A Brief Exchange the last couple of months, Noeleen recently put up a facebook album of the work done for the show, there is a lot of great work there.

I'd highly recommend you to check it out. Here is some of the work to whet your appetite...

Curriculum Studies - Painting

A fairly ropey still life painting I did as part of the Curriculum Studies module of the H. Dip for art and design teachers. We did this over the course of two afternoons (including the compositional sketches i've included here). We had to use poster paint (ick!) which is what the pupils use in school. This process really gave me an appreciation for what the pupils are up against. Working in an 80 minute art class is a really disjointed way of completing an ambitious still life painting. When I paint, I use acrylic and oils, give myself a nice permanent set up with an easel and work away at it for days at a time. It's a lot tougher working with poster paints on a table surface and under a tight time constraint.

Brief Exchange Exhibitors Gathering

The Brief Exchange Exhibitors Gathering happened Saturday 11th of August in Cork School of Music.  It was so interesting to see the other participants work, everyone's responses were so different. There was lots of artwork and design there that I found really beautiful and inspiring and i'm so delighted to have taken part (more about my piece here.)

The curator, Noeleen Doheny, did a really great job, the space looked wonderful and the standard was very high. It was also a very relaxed and friendly event, which is always lovely!

Brief Exchange travels to Dublin next, it's taking place for one week at the Exchange gallery from September 22nd.

Pinterest

I know i've been neglecting the blog recently, it's been a pretty busy summer and for the next 9 months i'm doing a H. Dip in art and design so it's going to be HECTIC.

I'm going to have to start keeping a professional teaching blog as part of the course pretty soon so i've a feeling my personal blog may be even more neglected... :(. The course is already really busy and i'm finding reasons to love Pinterest EVEN MORE! It's so great for pinning images relating to classwork. I'm teaching drawing at the moment and it's really handy for putting together and keeping track of visual aids. I'm teaching perspective next week, where to start?! A friend suggested here.

Day of the Dead

I did these oil paintings as a 30th birthday present for a mutually Mexico-loving friend.  I'm still learning oils, but really enjoying it! These are taking over a week to dry, and are still a bit wet in this photo.  I'm trying to decide now what to paint next?!

Applied Arts - Final Project

I'm a bit late posting this but here are a few shots from my final project in Applied Arts. It was a great year, I learned so much and it's all really valuable for my course this year.

This project was based on the notion of function, I spoke about it in an earlier post here.  I was happy with how the pieces turned out, I wanted to insinuate human damage by intentionally making the vases limb-like and in pairs and also by "inflicting" bruise and cut-like decoration.  I was hoping that these objects would invite the viewer to question the perception, meaning and limits of human functionality.