Visual Artists’ News Sheet | July – August 2021
Columns
Plein Air
Skills
One Hundred Summers
Fragmented Body
CORNELIUS BROWNE REFLECTS ON THE ENDURING LEGACY OF BRITISH PAINTER, JOAN EARDLEY.
MEL FRENCH DISCUSSES HER RECENT TRAINING IN SILICONE CASTING WITH MODEL-MAKER, PAUL MCDONNELL.
Joan Eardley, Untitled, c.1950s; Photograph courtesy of Glebe House and Gallery.
THIS SUMMER MARKS the centenary of Joan
Eardley’s birth. A summer thunderstorm in 1989 brought this painter into my life. Most days I was on the streets of Glasgow, entertaining passers-by with what is likely considered the lowliest form of outdoor art: scraping by as a pavement artist. Fleeing the downpour, coins jingling, I flung myself into a tiny gallery and found myself before a painting of Glasgow children, drawing with chalk on a pavement. The woman behind the desk was amused by the young man covered in colourful chalk dust so obviously captivated. She told me a little about Eardley, of whom I had never heard. The remainder of that summer, I scoured Glasgow and Edinburgh for more Eardleys. Ever since, she has travelled with me as a kind of patron saint of plein air. Eardley is often portrayed as a two-sided artist: half-urban and half-rural. Urban Eardley’s studio lay at the heart of an overcrowded and unsanitary Glasgow slum. Through the back streets of Rottenrow, she pushed her easel in a pram, drawing and painting the tenements and the children who called them home. Rural Eardley was an all-weather outdoor painter in the remote fishing village of Catterline in Aberdeenshire. Her cottage had an earth floor, no electricity or running water, with forty abandoned canvasses nailed to the underside of its roof to help keep out the rain. Glorious rain poured into Eardley’s painting life, however, along with wind and snow and whatever else the North Sea flung towards her easel, held down frequently by ropes and anchor. Paint became weather and weather became paint. The two Eardleys, I feel, also bled into one another. Rottenrow and Catterline had much in common; both small, poor, close-knit communities, existing under extreme pressure. Eardley’s letters from Catterline form a mosaic of her engagements with the elements: “In between blizzards it has been so much just
what I wanted for my painting – that I stupidly imagined I could rush out and in with my canvas. You know what a job it was setting up that canvas at the back of the house. Well, I’ve had it 3 or 4 times to do and undo in the teeth of the gale.” Mostly these letters were to her dear friend, Audrey Walker, whose first-hand reminiscences of Eardley “painting outside in appalling weather” are supported by her photographic record of the painter shoulder-deep in summer fields or facing tempestuous winter seas. “Wrapped up in her world” was how Walker described the woman in her viewfinder, deftly conveying the fullness of Eardley’s immersion in all she painted. I was born at Rottenrow hospital, five years after Eardley’s death, my parents having left Donegal in the 1950s. The Glasgow street over which the hospital loomed was one of Eardley’s favourite places to work, and from its windows she was a familiar sight. Eardley spent so much time standing on streets to draw that the constant and intense action of looking up at her subject and then down at the paper caused severe back problems, forcing her to wear a surgical collar. This vanished city, preserved by Eardley, greeted my unworldly parents as they arrived to join a Donegal community of migrant labourers, settled in the poorer tenement districts of Glasgow since the early twentieth century. Such bonds exist between the two places that as a child I thought the River Clyde flowed all the way from Glasgow to Donegal. Glasgow was permeated with a left-wing aesthetic, promoted by refugee Polish artist Josef Herman, in whose studio Eardley found inspiration and friendship. I myself was a socialist before I could tie my own shoelaces. In Donegal, we are fortunate to have two Eardleys on public display. Both are part of the Derek Hill Collection at the Glebe House and Gallery. Hill was an early admirer, making significant purchases and writing a tribute to Eardley for Apollo magazine in 1964. For several summers, the Glebe have invited me to tutor plein air workshops in their magnificent gardens. As I encourage painters to immerse themselves deeper in the experience of being alive at this moment in this place, I’m often aware of the presence of Eardley. She is nearby. According to Virginia Woolf, “great poets do not die; they are continuing presences; they need only the opportunity to walk among us in the flesh.” In this spirit, I overlook the fact that Joan Eardley died at the young age of 42, her ashes scattered on the shore at Catterline. She has now been alive for one hundred summers. And I have little difficulty imagining a wayfarer ducking indoors from a shower, one hundred summers from today. She will find herself before a wild Eardley seascape, astonished that this long-dead artist is so bracingly alive.
Cornelius Browne is a Donegal-based artist.
AS FAR BACK as I can remember, I would see
something on television or a friend’s toy I coveted, and would ask myself: “How can I make that?” I would fashion my own versions of these things out of any materials I could readily lay my hands on. I remember as a ten-year-old, saving up for months to buy a latex prosthetic kit for £9.99 in Argos. Alone in the house, I spent hours meticulously following instructions and applying individual latex scars and wounds that I had cast, painted and glued to my face. I still remember distinctly the complete fear I felt when I looked into the large wall mirror and saw the impact of the prosthetics in their totality; the prosthetics were ripped off and the kit was put away never to be used again. The point being that my interest in understanding materials and processes and using that knowledge to realise ideas has been there since childhood. Through my artistic career performance, video, photography, installation, drawing and sculpture have been dominant. I have extensive experience in moulding, making and casting in various mediums including rubbers, plaster, concrete, wax and Jesmonite. I was awarded The Irish Concrete Award for Sculpture twice. I push the possibilities of materials, often gaining specialist knowledge in specific mediums and then subverting ‘traditional’ processes, in order to achieve what I need for my work. My practice explores the space between human function and dysfunction, frequently referencing the human form literally, fantastically and abjectly. My research often compares the physical and psychological states of animals and humans. I collect materials such as human detritus, hair, laundry lint and found objects. Recently, hair and fragmented body parts, such as tongues and teats, have featured more frequently within my work. At the end of last year, I felt the progress of new work was stalled by my lack of technical knowledge in hyperrealism, relating to skin and surface effects (in silicone and oil-based clay) and hair punching. I believed specialist training would allow ideas to be realised with the visceral aesthetic I had imagined in sketches and maquettes. I contacted the model-maker Paul McDonnell to discuss the possibility of undertaking bespoke engagement that would teach me the skills I was hoping to learn. Paul has over 16 years experience as a lecturer at IADT in prosthetics and as a model-maker. Paul and I are familiar with each other’s practices and the range of skillsets we each possess, which allowed for immediate in-depth discussion and learning. Our introductory sessions, funded by Creative Ireland Westmeath, informed our strategy of engagement, which would comprise online workshops covering materials and sourcing, manipulation and surface effects with oil-based clay, silicone casting, colouring and hair punching. I later received an Arts Council Professional Development Award to fund these workshops. Through consultation, we agreed on a list of specialist materials and tools, which Paul ordered, divided and shipped to me. We were working remotely so it was important that we had exactly
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the same supplies, to ensure they would behave and work in exactly the same way. Sometimes Paul demonstrated and sometimes we worked simultaneously. I took extensive notes and asked many questions; Paul generously shared his knowledge, skills and decades of experience with good humour and the type of enthusiasm evident in someone who loves what they do. I undertook some of the processes live, whilst both Paul and I worked ‘alongside’ each other. I undertook other processes, such as casting, independently after the workshop, returning the following day with my sample casts to practice hair punching. Prior to working with Paul, I had commenced sculpting an oversized tongue in oil-based clay. Paul demonstrated surface manipulation and tool-use and then I applied the techniques to the sculpted tongue. All the workshops were recorded and emailed to me as ongoing reference material. The experience surpassed my expectations and my mind reeled with how this new knowledge would empower my practice; I was waking at night and making notes in my sketchbook. Since the last workshop, I have continued to experiment and develop further possible applications for these new skills. Paul has kindly offered to have one final online meeting to reflect on these experiments and to address any questions that have arisen through them – and so the learning continues. Mel French is a multi-disciplinary visual artist who holds a BA in Fine Art Sculpture from NCAD and an MA in Fine Art from The New York Academy of Art. Upcoming exhibitions include two-person shows with visual artist, Celine Sheridan, in Zoological Museum, Trinity College Dublin in 2022 and Limerick City Gallery of Art (date TBC). @melfrench
Mel French, oversized tongue sculpture in oil-based clay; Photograph courtesy the artist.
