Looking Back: Burren College of Art Residency, 2019
Connecting with Nature & Resetting my Art Practice
In 2019 I attended a month long art residency at the Burren College of Art in Ballyvauhan, Ireland. There were a couple of reasons I wanted to go here and paint.
One, I had recently changed my art focus from fine art painting to illustration & writing books. Writing and illustrating is something I had wanted to do my whole life. In 2019 I had one published book and two in process/under contract. I was really excited about this new part of my art and my career, but needed to spend some time and reconnect with what I was doing. I felt my fine art painting and illustration were in two separate compartments in my mind, and I needed them to merge in order to go forwards. Being a mom of 3, working part time at my husband’s architecture firm, and having two separate art careers didn’t make sense to me-that was way too much to juggle. Ihad no idea how to do merge my illustration & fine art painting practices; but I knew a month of focus, somewhere new, might help solve the issue.
Two: I have cousins, aunts and uncles I haven’t seen since I was a teenager. I hadn’t been to Ireland to see my grandmother’s grave, and I needed to go to reconnect with my family. It was important to me to keep up those relationships. My husband and children joined me for the second half of the residency. This was so special, because my children got to meet my cousins’ kids, and I am so excited they know each other now.
On the weekends, I visited with my aunt and uncle and cousins. I saw Connemara, the Ring of Kerry, Dublin and lots on the Atlantic Way such as Doolin, Kilkee, and Dingle. During the week I was in the studio at the Burren College.
The Burren College of Art is nestled at the base of the hills in Ballyvauhan. From the college, I could hike up into the rocky limestone hills and paint the flowers that grow amongst the rock. There are rare combinations of wildflowers that grow in the hills. If you want to learn more about the Burren and the flowers , I recommend you check out these links:
https://www.burrennationalpark.ie
https://www.burrencollege.ie
https://burren.ie
I enjoyed part of the “Wood Loop” trail which went from Monks Pier in the town all the way up to the college.I walked this loop often. Ballyvauhan is near the sea, but I also could enjoy fields, farmland, and forrest where it was situated. I experienced so many different landscapes in this one place. While I was here, I wrote the manuscript for my third picture book, “Wildflower”, which was inspired by walking this trail. You can read more about that book here.
The College has a castle tower, and beautiful light filled studios to work in, and a gallery. There was also a cafe that had the most delicious food, and two very friendly women who ran it and made everything. It was a really special place.
Daily I got up at 6 and walked up to the college. Sometimes I would walk the back trails and cut along fields to the college. I would work in the studio until lunch. Then I would eat at the cafe and sit outside if it was nice near the castle. You could often watch little goat up in the hills, or a horse up in a field. I would then go for a hike up into the hills, and spend the afternoon working plien air. I would return to the studio around 4, and work until I was too tired to move. I would then go home to the residence and eat in my room and write, and go to bed early and wake and do it again.
The routine of exploring in the hills and the dedicated time to work in a studio gave me so much perspective on my art and what I was making.
At first , I started off with old habits; I set up still lives and painted flowers in the studio. These were fine enough; but I could feel the tiredness I had for this body of work. For the past 10 years I have been making still lives, and honestly, I will probably come back to them at some point-but the little plein air paintings I was making in the hills on my hikes had so much more energy in them. I followed that feeling, and continued to work outside every day it wasn’t raining. The still lives I made there were good; but it gave me a feeling like a door shutting, that they were done for now.
Another thing happened in the studio that made me set the still lives aside. I visited Doolin, the cliffs of Moher and lots of stops along the coast; I realized I was in the prime place to make the illustrations for “The Book of Selkie”, which was my second book being published by Nimbus (2020) . The cliffs and sea there were inspirational; I made sketches at Fanore beach, Doolin, and Loop Head, which all turned into finished illustrations for the book. I had hoped to get some inspiration there, but I decided to go full out and make the illustrations while I was in Ireland. I work so much better from observation; so I re-dedicated my studio time to the illustrations.
Because I had to get everything back home on a plane, I brought a roll of mylar and yupo paper as my work surface. I decided to make the oil-painted illustrations on the paper, which is something I had tried earlier that year and really liked. The slippery surface of the yupo allows me to move the oil around in a way that mimics a watercolour painting. I like the look of watercolour in my illustrations, but always crave the the rich butteriness and the ability to layer with oil paint.
Working outside made my art more playful like my illustrations, and making illustrations in oil on the yupo paper made that work more like my paintings. After a month of working this way, I had gained the shift I needed to merge my two art practices, and I haven’t looked back.
Some insights I gained while at this residency:
-Walking outside and painting lets me tap into my storytelling. It makes my mind quiet; I can hear that storyteller voice that is deep down when I am walking and being present.
-Working without judgement and following what feels good is what always leads me to making good art, even if I don’t know where I’m headed while I am making it. The process for making my art involves quieting myself, quieting the judgemental voices, and trusting the intuition thats deep down and hard to tap into on a daily basis.
-Occasionally leaving my studio and working somewhere else as a “fresh start” for awhile gives me perspective on my art practice. These types of trips are too expensive to repeat often, but I have taken this lesson into practice by sometimes packing up everything in my studio, taking a few days off, returning and “starting over”.
