Issue 3 by Art Dogs

ISSUE 3 SEPTEMBER 2014

Sudhesh Kamath

Louise Lynch

Peadar Mc Daid

Deborah Stockdale

Aoife Gallagher

Maximum Homosapien Artist Contact

franck saucian rabid graphic designer visual artist

layla kuyper bad bitch public relations photographer

louise lynch malbona hundo editor photographer

Donegal is art. Carved by waves and glaciers, by man and woman. Always the land and the sea and the sky. Donegal is storied. Rich and tragic and glorious histories lap and twine. There a king, there a saint, there a pauper. Donegal is a muse. It is a canvas, it is a palette of ever changing tones. Donegal breeds art. The isolated, the everyday, the not-seen-in-galleries, the art that dare not speak its name. We have this compulsion, an itch, an energy. Sometimes a fear, a fever, creating maniacally in the wee hours and burning it the next day. Art is love and joyous, quietly crafting meditatively. This vision, the voice in our mind or the fire in our core, exalts civilizations and topples them. At its essence, it is breathing, it is life. We create for ourselves, we have no choice. Art is a bone buried in the backyard of the mind. Art Dogs is a free online magazine exploring the creativity and passion of artists based in Donegal. Curious, playful, and full of buried treasure.

art dogs we dig

PAINTER

Sudhesh Kamath

F rom an early age, drawing and painting was my favourite hobby, I was fascinated by forms and colours. My mother

told me a story about when I was five years old; she was drawing a picture of a person and was finding it difficult to complete the face, she went out of the room for a moment and when she returned I had drawn a face where she had been trying to. My parents could see that I had a flair for art and encouraged me to pursue it. My mother has always particularly inspired me. Art never seemed like a career choice so I studied computers. I did not receive any formal training in art but I practiced and experimented on my own trying to capture some of my imagination through art. I won several inter-college/state level painting competitions in India as well as All India National Level Prizes. Between ages 10 and 16 I got chance to participate and display my art works at several exhibitions held at different locations in India. After college I started working as a software professional in India. My work schedule was hectic and so painting took a back seat. I was going through a lull until I moved to Donegal. I feel that the beautiful landscapes, the idyllic atmosphere and the amicability of the people rekindled my artistic talent. I took up painting with a renewed vigor. I also had a chance to sell my paintings in a few art galleries in Letterkenny. I find that others react positively to my paintings and that this gives me inspiration and encouragement. When I was younger, I predominantly painted watercolor landscapes, people and places. I gradually developed an interest in charcoal portraits and then moved towards modern art. My artistic style is versatile and I prefer it this way, I am a kind of jack of all trades. I use diverse styles, colors and different techniques including sketching, water colour, oils, oil pastels, charcoal and collage. Each painting is individual, I paint in whatever style I feel like and experiment with a whole range of colours, hues, strokes and the impression of light and dark shades. My themes have differed over the years. I do it because I enjoy it so much. I become oblivious to the whole world around me when I am doing it. In fact, if I could, then all I would do is paint.

PHOTOGRAPHER

LOUISE LYNCH

Ia black can remember sitting in my cot when I was about two, with pen and some rough grey paper, squiqqling lines and

circles. My mother asked what I was drawing and I remember explaining to her what the markings meant and her smiling. We are all born with an innate compulsion to express, create, procreate or recreate in one way or another; that energy all comes from the same source. My expression has always been through my hands. As a child I took markers with me everywhere I went. In school art became graded, forced and judged; it did not belong to me anymore and after that, drawing did not feel right. It lost its freedom, my hands felt broken. I had no outlet. Then my brother bought me an SLR camera. I have always been fascinated by photography. I loved working with film and learning the art and science of capturing light. I fluctuated between grave yards, abandoned places and people or animals, always life and death, fascinated and terrified of both, they are always in my photos somewhere. Photography itself is imbued with this concept; when the shutter clicks, the moment dies and yet something new is born. Capturing any moment in time, regardless of how crap the photo is, feels really profound. Creativity is like a storm brewing in my mind, if I do not channel it properly, it messes up the place. The process is mostly intuitive; I do not think about it too much, I just do it - I take pictures of things I feel a connection with. Sometimes images bombard my mind and I need to see them outside of my head, to explore them and resolve them. What the camera captures is different from what my eyes see - sometimes it is completely transformed, revealing much deeper content. The images I take are a part of me so it can make me feel vulnerable but it allows me to get outside of myself; I am endlessly trapped in one perspective, with one set of senses and sometimes it can be suffocating. Now I use a DSLR and I take photos of everything. I like telling stories. What I am interested in alternates from the mundane to the epic. I love it all. Donegal connects me with the land and nature, which gives me great peace and happiness. I especially love capturing how people interact with the environment when they meet it and how it makes them feel.

VISUAL ARTIST

PEADAR Mc DAID

I think as children we are all artists; we pioneered graffiti

art and became masters of the wall. For me, art really began in secondary school. There was a lack of proper support and encouragement with academic studies in school and I found myself rebelling against the system after one incident in particular. My English teacher humiliated me in front of the entire class stating I would never achieve anything in life. He then threw me out of the class for the rest of the term. I spent a lot of time in study hall and became bored. I would sneak up to the art class and ask for some paper to draw on. The art teacher, Miss Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Dowd, was a real source of inspiration and encouragement, she would let me sit at the back of the art room and draw. She gave me some much needed confidence and I will never forget her for that. It feels great being an artist, in some way I think it gives you a different outlook on life, you are constantly looking through an artistic eye; colours, ideas, people, feeling and emotions. I love photography too. I got a great wee camera recently, thanks to my big brother Brian and at the moment I love shooting in black and white. I did not plan on being an artist, it just happened. I think our lifeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s path is set out in front of us. If you had told me in secondary school that I would be an artist, I would have laughed at you. Art was not seen as a real career choice when I was growing up, it was just a hobby. I am an art tutor at the Create-A-Link art centre in Letterkenny and it has, in the last twelve years, become my unofficial working studio. I use some of my artwork in the course I teach to students. Over the past twenty years, my style and what inspires me has changed. It evolves and grows out of different things in life. I mainly paint and it comes in bursts, I could have three to four pieces on the go at the same time. I store a ton of ideas in my head, analysing and tearing an idea apart before starting preliminary drawings, then like a thunderstorm moving in, the sky opens and boom, it all happens.

TEXTILE ARTIST

DEBORAH STOCKDALE

grew up in America surrounded by beautiful textiles, embroideries and lace my family had collected whilst living in Central America. We also had traditional American quilts from great -grandmothers and grandmothers. I learned to sew at school and started making my own clothes, then progressed to patchwork. Patchwork and quilting often involve recycled and upcycled fabrics. I moved to Ireland in the late 1970’s and fabric sources were very limited so I worked with tweed and linen off cuts from nearby factories. This lead me to emulate the pared down aesthetic of the Amish and Mennonite quilts of the U.S. and their stark geometries and tonal treatment of colours. I then began to incorporate the techniques of early Impressionistic painters into my own work; piecing, re-cutting and reassembling patchwork into new formats. In the 1990’s I discovered the Art Quilt and fabric painting movement and began making my own fabric resulting in finished pieces with rich textures providing depth and shadows. I have developed several strands of artistic expression through quilt making. This first I call my ‘personal mythology’, images or impressions of archetypes and myths, natural forces and landscapes, my own internal imagery, so to speak. The second strand developed after looking at images of plants, animals and minerals from a microscopic viewpoint. The third major strand of my creative work involves history and memories expressed through textiles. Creating is engrossing, absorbing and sometimes overwhelming. Often there is a big creative mess around me! When I am working on a big project, I think about it constantly, night and day. I usually have a clear internal image for the outcome but I also incorporate chance elements freely. I am always open to change, if something is not working, I rework it until I feel it is right. Most of my life I have lived in small cottages so I dream of having a large, well lit, spacious studio space but in the meanwhile I work in my kitchen surrounded by family, friends, cups of tea and pets. I have always been doing what I love. There are plenty of things I still want to do, and I hope when I am a (very) old lady, I will still create and have the vision to make my art work in textiles a reality.

VISUAL ARTIST

AOIFE GALLAGHER

mum told me that when I was a toddler, I would shade in my Lion King colouring book with a pen. I am pretty sure that from a young age I have always had art bug. I cannot think back to a time when I was not creating my art. It is my life. Creating art makes me feel free, at peace and positive. If I am ever down, in an angry mood or having a bad day, I draw or paint and my worries are gone. My art is very personal and each piece carries with it a piece of me. When I create, I venture into my own little world, my own tranquil safe haven. At the hardest times in my life, art has been a healthy crutch, providing me with therapy. As my art became stronger, so did I. I mainly use pens, inks and water colours but sometimes I dabble in a bit of everything. I am heavily influenced by nature and music. I usually take photos of trees or flowers and create something inspired by them. I cannot create without music so I am constantly listening to my favourite floaty or folksy music. I draw and paint anywhere and everywhere: at home, in the park, in a garden, but the place that has the best facilities and where I create the most is the amazing art studio called Create-A-Link in Letterkenny. This place is a rehabilitative centre for people who have been or are struggling with their mental health. The centre, with its amazing and inspiring tutor, Peadar McDaid, have helped me grow as an artist as well as a person. I have my own cubicle and desk, covered in my paintings, sketches and things that inspire and influence me. I feel that I have greatly improved and progressed as an artist since I started in Create-A-Link. It is the most relaxed, down to earth place; it has changed my life. I draw or paint because like breathing I need it to survive. I could not imagine my life without art. I also create in a therapeutic way, as a means of release. I have always found it easier to speak with drawings and paintings than with words. Funnily enough, during the darkest times, the pictures I draw always end up being enlightening and full of joy. My art is my medicine.

WRITER

MAXIMUM HOMOSAPIEN

It all began with singing and requisite embarrassing poems

as a young child. For as long as I can remember I have always been in love with the magic and mystery of words. From a very young age I had a strong sense that words, language and ideas were the foundation of the reality we live in and experience. This brought me to the conclusion that my thoughts, words and beliefs largely determine my experience. If that is true, (and I still believe it is) then it becomes quite important to study this mechanism, this art, this language. So I did. I write and perform poetry, plays and songs. I also make abstract drawings and collages. Writing feels like performing one of the greatest true magick tricks. Producing something from nothing. It feels utterly freeing, healing and invigorating. It feels easy. It feels easy because it is not me; it is not of me. My work consists mainly in getting out of the way of it. Being there without being in the way. The success or failure of every piece rests on how much or how little I have muddied the water of the transmission. I make a habit of trying not to think. And when I am successful in doing that, it leaves a space or vacuum which attracts wandering ideas like butterflies. These butterflies, if they feel safe enough, and I am still and quiet enough, will land and rest in my mind. Then if we both feel I am a good fit for delivering their ideas, they move into a percolation pot with lots of other ideas. It is in this place that they all swish around until one day, who knows when, like a bingo ball it will pop out and say, â&#x20AC;&#x153;Legs Eleven. I am ready, get a pen and paper right now.â&#x20AC;? The not-thinking-butterfly-attraction stage is done in many places. Swimming Pool. Walking. In bed sleeping or meditating. The physical writing part is done wherever I am when the bingo ball pops out. Residing in inspiration feels wonderful and it is deeply, deeply satisfying to earth these vaporous energies in words for others to experience. Most importantly, if I want to be happy, then I really have no choice but to do it.

Featured Art Form

The Poem

Creativity is an energy. It is not born, it does not die, it only transforms. The sixth artist featured in each issue will be a writer. Writers craft images, words which inspire images within us. The visual form is deeply connected with all other forms of creativity, it grows from the same tree, is rooted in the same terra and gains energy from the same earth. It reminds us how everything we create is inspired from the art that we adulate, the art that we revile, the art that is imprinted and the art that we forget.

Poison By Maximum Homosapien

Maximum Homosapien has composed a short piece of creative prose inspired by Louise Lynchâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s image from this issueâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s submissions.

With each breath, a little death infuses. â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Til in time our very breathing bruises

The parting lips of expectation, and chooses Instead the cup as cradle, and distance bled Of fear and habit uninhabited.

For when two love, a third is created.

And in that three together, congregated, Is a vessel.

And a message given.

A pageant of a poison eld, and longing driven West, that heaven of the earth made conquest

Might humbly request, and in due course be blessed In tasting purest alkahest. In tasting purest alkahest. And so reborn from the embers of virgin and pigeon, Mother of the dying gods and carrion religion. Drink deep.

Drink deep and love thyself as thy brother. Trade one poison for another.

And in that delirious death of mindful intoxication, We may achieve true liberation.

Liberation for a nation so deeply penitent and penitential. Mendicant and sickly reverential

Of the toys and trappings of our very own Drink deep.

incarceration.

And wake from the dream of separation.

And the subtle implication that you are not enough.

A gift from a wandering bishop, who landed roughly on our shores Like a comet once extinguished dinosaurs.

Leaving fossils only of a people dispossessed And a crater where it came to rest. And a crater where it came to rest.

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Sudhesh Kamath

Louise Lynch

https://www.facebook.com/ louiselynchphotography

Peadar Mc Daid

Deborah Stockdale

http://www.newirishart.com/irish-artists/ deborah-j-stockdale-artist.htm https://www.facebook.com/pages/Deborah-JStockdaleTextile-Artist/1449020108651674

Aoife Gallagher

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Lotus-Illustr ations/645033138945187?fref=photo

Maximum Homosapien

https://www.facebook.com/therevelry

s u b m i s s i o n p o l i c y Art Dogs are on the prowl, we have got the itch and we are hunting, digging and searching for artists, we want to celebrate art in all its forms all over Donegal! Have you been creating? Has your work been seen by only a few eyes? perhaps even just you and your dog? Are you nestled away in the hills whittling wood into the wee hours? Painting, drawing, doodling or sculpting in your spare time? Excellent. We want to hear from you! We are looking specifically for artists who may or may not have exhibited their work before, artists who may not even consider themselves artists. People who create because they must, because it is core to who they are. Does this sound like you or somebody you know? For submissions please send us some photos of your work, a little bit of information about yourself and where you are based. We will come and photograph you and your work. E-mail: artdogsmagazine@gmail.com Facebook: facebook.com/artdogsmagazine We look forward to hearing from you! Woof.

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Artists retain full copyright over all artwork featured in Art Dogs magazine and has been published with full informed consent and permission. All other content is