lildil

I picked up a thin slightly larger than A4 book at a book fair. I thought it was going to be about photography. It had an image on the front of a family group which looked like it had been applied using a liquid photographic emulsion, so I thought maybe this is a book about traditional photographic techniques; which have always fascinated me. It was titled “Episodes from the Passion”. The image on the front is black-and-white, the cover was glossy. But nothing about this cover prepares you for what is inside this thin, unassuming, book.

The next page told me that the name associated with this book was Hughie O’Donoghue. I was still none the wiser; this artist had never crossed my path. The next page. Said RHA. Gallagher Gallery. Dublin. I am still intrigued. I turned the page to find out that this exhibition has been sponsored by Jameson’s whiskey. I see the list of contents. On my father‘s side his mother’s father came Ireland. We’ve never known much about that side;  apparently her father was a man a few words. All we know was that my Nana’s father was Irish but not where from. I’ve always had a fascination with Ireland wondering if one day I’d walk along a street and see someone who felt familiar, looked a bit like me, someone who sounds a bit like me. The flight is fanciful; I do realise that. But the fascination persists anyway.

 

I then find out from the book when they are talking about a passion they mean THE Passion with a great big capital P i.e Christ, God, Virgin Mary et cetera. So this is going to intrigue me more, or it could piss me off, or the work could be very dull and not something I will like. I’m still interested though. I wrote my dissertation back in 1992 on the “Repression of Women in Art Religion and Culture” where I spent countless hours, weeks, months understanding the history of Christianity and what came before it, how artists have reflected this in their Art and in written forms as well. This obsession humanity has with the spiritual and need to worship has always captured my curiosity. But its not something I’ve explored for a long time after 10 years in Commercial Photography and 21 years teaching Art. But I did explore it in my Art and in my writing and then life got in the way.
 

The background, by Richard Ryan, Chairman of the Hughie O’Donoghue Art Committee mentions Anselm Kiefer, Sean Scully, EM Forster, JMW Turner, Francis Bacon and Rembrandt. All of this are exciting creators. All men (of course) but exciting originals. It describes how the O’Donoghue was commission to create a series of paintings on the Passion of Christ by a USA collector called Mr Craig Baker in 1986 and how he has now given the series to the Irish People, specifically the Office of Public Works (OPW).

 

In a major exhibition in 1997 at the Haus den Kunst in Munich, the director Christoph Vitali said

 

“Together the bravura of Old Master’s brushstrokes and the virtuoso mastery  of the painterly craft – which have become so unusual these days – make these paintings so remarkable”

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 Craig Baker, writes in his preface, that art that matters can be “dangerous to look at”, because you “lose the option of remaining passive” concluding his opening paragraph with “this art is about the presence of warm bodies”. He goes on to explain that people identify with it, whether they know or do not know the story, believe or don’t believe, this or anything at all. The works, he says deal with betrayal, self-doubt and are not religious artworks. He talks about the speed of modern life and the hurt that we cannot see, the violence that we do see, the cheek that we turn away when we see something we find painful.

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So the book Hugh O’Donoghue ignited a fire in me. When I opened the plates and I saw the work; The brush strokes, the passion in the paint, it made me want and need to paint. I bought the book, obviously, and pored over it all afternoon. I went to bed that night thinking about the book and everything I had seen. We watched the rest of Sally Wainwrights brilliant Riot Women series. That scene in Episode 1 with the English HOD & her line manager I have watched multiple times; it resonated.

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On my degree, over 30 years ago, I created an installation in a long basement room, filled it with incense smoke and projected a loop of a spinning crucifix which had upon it a naked woman (myself). The crucifix was double sided and spun on an axis, not vertical, at exactly 45  degrees. The room smelled like church, the projection sat on the smoke, the room was filled with a loop of Gregorian chants from the Nuns of the Isle of Wight (another personal connection with family). There were many more pieces in this vein but this is one that seems to relate specifically to here.

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I woke early; 4am. An image came to me fully formed. It was a series of images that said everything I was feeling about being a menopausal woman, undiagnosed AuDHD, creatively stifled, unlistened to, invisible, unsure about my future, frustrated, furious, wanting peace, struggling with focus, trying literally everything find an authentic way forward but finding only rage and confusion. But in my mind  I could see a series of paintings; something beautiful, something me, something I wanted and needed to create. Images that brought back old ideas, formed new ones, enjoyed paint, used techniques I loved and used techniques I don’t know how to do yet. I could see them. I now need to make them. I have only one canvas in my studio. Its not huge but I’m going to use it to flesh out this idea in visual form.

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Fate brought me to that book fair, fate found me that book