Pictures @ an exhibition 2016 RTÉ lyric fm

Pictures @ an Exhibition On Culture Night, Friday 16th September 2016, seven graduates of Limerick School of Art & Design will display their art digitally with accompanying text in the RTÉ lyric fm windows on Robert Street, Limerick (9am to 7pm, Mon to Sun).

The venture is aimed at illustrating the interrelationship between art forms, and bringing art to the wider public audience.

Each artist was asked to choose a piece of music from any genre that inspires them, and write a short text about how music forms part of their daily creative practice. Making art can be quite a private process, but these beautiful texts give a unique insight into a deeply personal activity, allowing the viewer a rare vantage point.

According to the participating artists, music is what drowns out the news of the day and distractions of life, revisits and stimulates the experiences within us, and provides another space and a different form of energy...RTÉ lyric fm, 96-99fm, where life sounds better...

RTÉ lyric fm is Ireland’s national classical music and arts station. It broadcasts a wide range of music from classical, opera, jazz, world and roots, traditional and contemporary, through to music from the movies, chamber music, sacred and more, as well as crafted speech programming, features, and documentaries, which assist the listener in their understanding of the music we play and the arts in Ireland and abroad. Listen on 96-99fm. For more detail log on to www.rte.ie/lyric

FOREWORD

Art is frozen music (with apologies to J.W. Goethe). I was reminded of that statement when asked to respond to this special presentation to mark Culture Night by RTÉ lyric fm. Seven artists, all graduates of Limerick School of Art & Design, have submitted paintings to mark this democratic celebration of culture in our city.

Some 40,000 to 20,000 years ago, Neanderthals – our most direct ancestors - would have gathered near the entrances to caves. According to David Hendy in his book, Noise, these enclosed spaces have their own acoustic character: echoing voices but also intensifying them. When we whisper, hum, speak or sing they shout and sing back to us. Recently archaeologists have tried an experiment that revealed something remarkable. Moving slowly, and in total darkness they used their voices as a kind of sonar, sending out a pulse of sound then listening out for any unusually resonant response. When they found the sound around them suddenly changing, they would turn on their torches. At that precise point they would often see on the wall or ceiling a painting – maybe a small dot of red ochre or a more complex pattern of lines, a handprint, an animal. The significance of this is that wherever a cave sounds most interesting, you are also likely to find the greatest concentration of pre-historic art.

The point of the above is to demonstrate the potency and desire to link different art forms for a variety of reasons. We can see that our ancestors were doing it and now we can celebrate the beauty of this formidable continuation of that influence art has on artists.

Fauré felt that the ultimate purpose of music – of all art, in fact – “was to lift us as far as possible above what it is”. I believe that each of the seven works here lifts us very far indeed!

Una McCarthy, Director/Curator Limerick City Gallery of Art

Lighthouse (The Silent Keeper) Acrylic/Mixed Media on MDF board 4ftx3ft

Artist: Sheila Richardson

The Silent Keeper was made during a time of deep sadness, the death of my father, and is echoed in the musical score of Wagner’s prelude Tristan and Isolde which captures the quality of sound and mood of the painting. It is the soundtrack to Lars von Trier’s iconic film Melancholia (2011) which resonated with me at the time of painting.

Creating images has been a part of my life from an early age. It was through painting, I sensed I could creatively imagine that which was present but seemingly absent. Those things that we cannot see but know exist, feelings, emotions, sensations and sounds, dreams, memories, thoughts etc. This sense of creative imagination and intuition is an integral part of my art practice and self-expression.

The external world of landscapes mirrors my emotional interiority. I look to painting for ways of being.

Journeys, travel and life transitions, loss, solitude, joy, relationships and life’s rituals are themes and are explored through symbolic imagery. The act of painting is a very physical and sensorial experience.

Sheila Richardson Graduated LSAD 1990

The Archipelago Vigil oil on canvas 120 x 91 cm

Artist: Robert Ryan

I live by a lake shore in Lough Gur, Co. Limerick, a place of rich archaeological significance. The lake has several bronze age crannogs and a natural island. I have always seen islands as isolated worlds, and though I do not paint from life, I paint islands as allegories that hint at solitude or exile.

'The Archipelago Vigil' is a large canvas that I painted in 2009. A nocturne, the painting is of a group of islands inhabited by white dog-like creatures that guard a fire on each island under a full moon.

The piece of music that I have chosen to accompany my painting is the title track from Enya's 2015 album 'Dark Sky Island‘. Sometimes our appreciation of an artist’s music can be diminished or over-looked by their success, but I believe Enya's atmospheric, spacious, well crafted recordings are much more then the new age ambient category into which they are so often pigeon-holed. This highly individual music is 'in a league of its own' in the 'pantheon of popular music‘. 'Dark Sky Island' received huge critical acclaim when it was released last year.

Though it is not a concept album, many tracks are about a journey. A journey across an ocean, land, through space. The journey through life to death and beyond. That's why I chose this track from the album.

'The Archipelago Vigil' with smoke rising from each island fire gives the painting a ceremonial suggestion. Fire connecting the living with the heavens.

Robert Ryan Graduated LSAD 1987

Locus XXVI (Frűhling) Acrylic & oil on canvas 150x150cms

Artist: Samuel Walsh

Music has been an intricate part of my life for all of my life. I was the record monitor in my first primary school in London and I impressed everyone with my knowledge of Wagner at the interview for my subsequent secondary school. John Ruddock, founder and creator of the Limerick Music Association was my principal at Villiers’ Secondary School when I attended in the late 1960s. I made posters for him.

Between the years 1976-1978 I worked for the Decca Record Company also in London in their Quality Control Department where I was exposed to the full gamut of Decca’s extensive classical catalogue. This interest is hardly ever reflected in my studio work but in the case of ‘Locus XXVI (Frűhling)’ it has come together. Locus is the Latin for Place and Frűhling is the German for Spring. The painting came about by watching a German dance group dancing to Stravinsky’s ‘Rite of Spring’.

My studio day begins with the insertion of a CD into a player. I toyed with choosing the beautiful Andante from Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto and many others but in the end opted for something more personal, the Introitus from ‘Lux Æterna’, by the American composer Morten Lauridsen. In 2011 I heard my daughter Esther and her choir at the time Cantairi Avondale sing it in June of that year in Dublin. This decision rises above favourites or intellectual choice, it is particular in ways I find difficult to explain; but, lucky am I to have lived long enough to hear this beautiful piece of music sung by my daughter’s voice.

Samuel Walsh Graduated LSAD 1974

Line Within Oil on Canvas, wood and brass screws.

65 x 32 x 12cm

Artist: Allyson Keehan

Something uplifting. Something inspirational. Something to distract my thoughts from the encumbrance of the everyday.

Painting is a solitary practice. It is difficult to describe where the ideas for work come from, they are fed from constant visual feeds from walking around the city, from reading a piece of literature or in my case, from reading a philosophical description of a world folding in on itself. I divide my time into blocks spending a few weeks reading and writing, getting deep into the research. Then I have a few weeks making, immersing myself in the activity, the process, the experimental and exploratory. The music that fills my studio during this time is dance music, it has to have a beat, a rhythm, an energy and most importantly it has to make me get up and dance. Painting is physical and the body needs to be awake, dancing boosts endorphins and stretches out the body.

My studio is my ‘happy place’, my oasis, and my sanctuary. The music I play compliments these thoughts, music that triggers happy memories and embeds a feeling of contentment.

It was two years ago, August, Ibiza, the outdoor club Ushuaia, the sun was setting on a really hot evening, airplanes flying over the main stage, lights, pyrotechnics, dancers, skin, hot men and hot bodies. My best friend and I walked through the crowd; I think it was the most content, devilish, hedonistic and happy I have ever been. Adventures with your best friend, what else is there?

This is the song that brings me straight back, this is what drowns out the news of the day and distractions of life, and this is what lies underneath all my work. This is Bullit by Watermat.

Allyson Keehan Graduated LSAD 2002

Sea Echoes Oil and acrylic on board 40 x 36 cm

Artist: Gavin Hogg

I listen to different kinds of music when I am working in the studio, generally in the afternoon as the mornings are reserved for more contemplative and focused consideration of the work. Listening to music while I work provides another space and a different form of energy, which plays a part in the quality of the working experience, rather than directly influencing individual pieces.

I particularly like the ethereal nature of the Flower Duet from LakmĂŠ by Delibes. There is something other worldly about this piece, which has an affinity with the imaginative space in some of my painting. ‘Sea Echoes’ being a particularly good example, as I feel the viewer is invited to move into and out of the painting by the increasing and decreasing rings, like the rise and fall of the voices in the Flower Duet.

Gavin Hogg Graduated LSAD 1987

But it Might Rain Oil on canvas 100 x 100 cm

Artist: Nuala O’Sullivan

To the unknowing eye, my studio appears somewhat chaotic and when I am not painting I spend my time making collages, researching, and writing amid a confusion of material. But when the time comes to paint and I am ready, I cannot wait to begin. Starting a new work is the most exciting thing!

My music choices are somewhat untidy too and, much to the embarrassment of my children, instead of listening on my iPhone I generally listen to my CDs on an old Walkman. Everything from Greenday to Willie Nelson have a place in my collection but my favourite, for a really long time, is the music of Puccini. The music takes me back to my first time seeing Madame Butterfly and to how I was transported by the emotion and drama of the music. I felt as though I was sitting alone in the theatre so powerful was the sensation. Un Bel Di, Vedremo, from Madame Butterfly still manages to do that. As I listen in my studio, I feel my shoulders and neck relax and this allows me to paint more instinctually and freely. When my painting day is over, both the subject matter and the surface of the paintings I have worked on tells the story of my day and in part the music I have listened to.

Nuala O’Sullivan Graduated LSAD 2006

Summer Wind Oil on linen 38 x 42 cms

Artist: Maurice Quillinan

The piece of music which has been a part of my working life this past year is ‘Prophecies’ from Koyaanisqatsi by Philip Glass (1983, track 6). The words are from the Hopi Indian verses, telling us what will happen to the earth if we neglect to care for it. To me, even though it is a dark piece, there is constantly the hope of a redemptive nature, nurtured in the more melodic organ solo elements.

My work is entirely landscape based. I am trying to convey how I experience the land/water. They are not visual transcriptions but marks and colours which endeavour to convey the experiences and emotions of being in a particular place. A painting of a place is just pigment on canvas, it will never be that place, it is the colours, shapes and marks which initiate in the viewer a memory of a time lived. It is the same with music, it revisits and stimulates the experiences within us. Music enriches and guides me through the most salient passages of my past.

The title of the painting comes from Frank Sinatra’s 1965/66 song ‘Summer wind’. The song uses the Sirocco wind as a metaphor for the memories of the passing of time and the seasons. The painting is viewed from a kayak in Anse Mejean, near Toulon, looking towards shore. It is a memory of swimming here and the sensation of cold water churned up from the bottom of the bay by the Mistral wind, unevenly mixing with the sun warmed top layer. Like music these layers are unseen, so one never knows what emotion they will trigger.

Maurice Quillinan Graduated LSAD 1983