Mark Clare - I Believe In You

Image taken from markclare.com

Mark Clare has a beautiful exhibition in Crawford art gallery at the moment. My favourite piece is DemocraCity. I first saw it at Dublin Contemporary and it totally transfixed me then as it did last Saturday when I visited the Crawford exhibit. There's something very hypnotic about it, there's a deep sense of isolation, almost moving into bleakness. The landscape depicted seems both desolate and pure at the same time. The music accompanying it is just beautiful as well. It's one of the loveliest and most impactful pieces of video art i've ever seen.

The exhibition has quite an academic write-up of the concepts behind the video, I wasn't aware of any of this while watching it and was still totally captivated and absorbed by the piece without knowing any of the politics behind it.

Here's an excerpt from the exhibition publication:

In the animation we travel through a timeline of iconic Modernist buildings, symbolic of a utopian dream and on through a cityscape and the industrial structures necessary to deliver the fuel that powers our cities. Finally we move into a landscape based on artist renditions for the Onkalo waste depository site...

You can read more about the work here.

It's in the Crawford gallery until November 1st, go see it!

Brian Tattoo Final Final Ultimate Finished

Ha!  So the title is a joke about file names I had in college,  I guess only my m&ms would get it.

Anyway,  couldn't leave this alone & I think I like this one the best, all done in ballpoint pen.  I forgot how nice they are to draw with.  I felt the photoshop one was possibly too much of a mish mash of different styles... though I might go back & try & sort out the hair on it....

The geometry of innocent flesh on the bone causes Galileo's maths book to get thrown at Delilah who is sitting worthlessly alone but the tears on her cheeks are from laughter.

This is also my first time posting using the blogger app, so hopefully the formatting isn't gone all weird...

Tattoo Design

My brother Brian asked me to design a tattoo for him based on the Bob Dylan lyric "the geometry of innocent flesh on the bone causes Gallileo's maths book to get thrown at Delilah who is sitting worthlessly alone, but the tears on her cheeks are from laughter"

This is where I am with it, I have my usual versionitis where I keep at things and never know which is the finished one! I think i'm done now though, and i'll let the rest up to Brian and the tattoo artist, although looking at it again, maybe she's a bit too ghostly... and maybe the gradient line in her hair is too straight... argh!.

Here's some of the initial thumbnails exploring ideas, mostly done in airports over the summer....

Suadela + Torcán

I finalised the Suadela & Torcán poster, you can see some of the prep here, i'm quite happy with it and had fun making it!

And the theme tune for today....

Prep for lino

This is based on a photo taken by my lovely friend, artist & fellow art teacher, Natasha Edmondson. I'm planning on turning it into a lino triptych print, that was meant to happen this week but I got sidetracked with the Suadela poster. It WILL happen though!

Bellydancers!

Officially my new favourite thing to draw! These are preliminary sketches and (really) rough thumbnails for a poster for Suadela bellydance. I took reference photos from the Suadela site.

And the perfect tune to go with all of this...

And finally, shots of the ladies themselves... (all taken from their facebook)

Psychonautes

Slightly in love with this guys work. I've been admiring his skulls and portraits around town for a good while now and was pleased to see one of his portraits of Jean-Michel Basquiat at the Camden Palace centre at Kfest a couple of weekends ago.

I presumed he was based in Cork but judging from his Flickr he works in some other cities too. His Facebook is also here if you want to take a look.

Na hOibreacha, Crawford 2014

I finally got a chance to call into the 4th year show in Crawford today. Some beautiful work as always, here are some of my highlights...

Constance Roberts

Femke Vandenburg

Helen Stringer

Maria Elizabeth Muller-Took

Beautiful Hooping!

I was treated to some amazing impromptu LED hooping last night, yet another thing I really want to learn! Plus I got to try out my FAB new camera, a Canon Powershot SX270 HS. This was perfect for testing aperture and shutter speed settings.