Próiseas/Process
The start of September- can you believe it!!
After I did the aluminium series, I really wanted to concentrate more closely on what the drone images had found and I found the ones taken of Bessbrook Spinning Mill the most interesting. Probably because everything was still intact, especially a lot of the Victorian architecture and the weaving linen sheds. From the air there was so much diversity in shape and line. There is a great wee article here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/yourplaceandmine/armagh/bessbrook_mill.shtml
Sam Hanna (a local historian), ‘explains that the weaving sheds shook to the thunderous vibrations of the looms and so had to be sited on the ground floor of any mill. The strange slanted windows above were designed to face north which allowed only a diffused light source to fall on the looms which aided the workforce’.You can see these sheds in the bottom two images in the right hand corner in a mint green colour…
Once again, when I looked at the images, I wanted to look closer, to forget about the original format and structure and concentrate on just line, colour and form. I zoomed in on parts of the mill and solarized the images. I also did this with parts of the other watchtowers but Bessbrook was the most interesting. As I said before, I’d like to do limited edition prints or prints/paintings of these as they just conjure up so many different images of another world, another outer world!!!
I named the work, Próiseas which means Process in Irish. Originally it was to be called The Normalisation Process- The path to political “normalisation” has been a regular feature of debate about Northern Ireland over the past two decades, since the paramilitaries (mostly) laid down their arms and the main republican and unionist parties (mostly) committed to making a success of power-sharing and devolution. I thought this was the most bizarre title for a process that I had ever heard, and after living through The Troubles, I decided against it as I felt calling anything about The Troubles and its aftermath was anything but normal.
I started by experimenting with oils on a transparent paper called Mylar Paper (see above) but didn’t like the outcome at all- too blocky!!! I’ll use these as collages or work back into them at a later point though!
Próiseas actually became a good fit as I had decided that I wanted to have all this work based on paper with an ink background and use acrylics, oil bar and oil pastels to make marks on top. I can’t actually remember why I wanted to use this approach but I had been experimenting with washes of oils at the time and liked how it worked as a background but I could get a better ‘bleed’ with a particular type of ink. I wanted the main focus to be on the linear components of the work and the backgrounds to sort of blur out so I knew then I would have to use acrylics (to use on water-based ink). I had never used acrylics before and it really was a ‘process’ which was very new to me and a very hard process at the time!!!! I was so used to the drying time and mixing of oils, I HATED acrylics at the start but they eventually grew on me-only near the very end mind you but I can see the positives in using them now however. What I would say if you are using acrylics, especially if you are used to oils, is to invest in really good pigmented paints such as Liquitex or Golden.
Most papers carry different weights and absorbencies so I experimented on loads before I started to get the ink ‘bleed’ I wanted but I worked specifically with three on this series- Khadi (above), which I thought would give the best pay off but was the worst, as in no beautiful bleed or rust of the ink; Fabriano (below), which was second but Saunders Wexford Watercolour Paper came out on top!!(very bottom images) Therefore, I can sort of categorize the series into three groups and in the end, as I got more confident using acrylic paint I just painted more and more so ended up with about twenty pieces!!!
You can find out a bit more about Príoseas here and there are still pieces available to purchase on my website.
