A huge thank you to everyone who joined me at my studio exhibition on the final day of my residency at Uillinn West Cork Arts Center. I was truly moved by all the responses and loved every conversation. I’m deeply grateful to West Cork Arts Center for this opportunity, which provided incredible support and gave me the space and time to reflect on my practice and explore pathways I had never taken before.
Here are a few quotes that accompanied me on my journey of creating this installation:
If, for diagrammatic convenience, one accepts the metaphor of time as a flow, a river, then the act of drawing, by driving upstream, achieves the stationary.
John Berger, “On Drawing”
1605
Each that we lose takes part of us;
A crescent still abides,
Which like the moon, some turbid night,
Is summoned by the tides.
Emily Dickinson
A pebble polished by waves is pleasurable to the hand, not only because of it’s soothing shape, but because it expresses the slow process of its formation; a perfect pebble on the palm materialises duration, it is time turned into shape.
Juhani Pallasmaa, “The Eyes of the Skin”
I carry it, constantly
I carry it all
Tess Leak in collaboration with Gerald O’Brien, a poem celebrating the rich heritage of the River Ilen flowing through Skibbereen (a mural in the town center of Skibbereen)
Collaboration with the Atlantic Ocean / Raft / Kenmare, Ireland /
‘Blue of Distance’ at Sarah Walker Gallery, Castletownbere, co. Cork /
"I would give the water a voice to hum": Water Drawing 6 at the group exhibition at Firkin Crane in Cork /
I am delighted to have my work featured in the Irish Times! The group exhibition of Kerry-based artists runs until the 24th of February at Firkin Crane in Cork.
Open Studio December 2023 /
Many thanks to everyone who came to my first Open Studio Days in Kenmare! Thank you for such warm welcome and for all the wonderful conversations. Here are a few pics from the studio.
OPEN STUDIO | 9 - 10 December 2023 | Kenmare, Ireland /
"At The Edge" /
Whilst lying on the deck of the Antigua I let the water rock me. I gave up control. Yet I realised after a while that I was still gently counterbalancing. I tried to give up that too. I thought about the navigators in the days of old who could sense the motion of the water and 'see' what was coming by lying on the deck with their eyes closed. Their eyesight was a distraction. Sometimes we see better with our eyes closed. I let the water take me to places which I hadn't known about myself.
Nothing felt stable on the boat and it seemed a natural way of being, life is constantly changing and only uncertainty is certain.
Isn’t this gentle rocking a way of being closer to nature, a womb like state. Why is the ground where I live so hard and stepping on it doesn’t bring back memories? We all come from the sea. But have we forgotten? Maybe if the ground was delicately moving we would remember more clearly that we are just passers by on this planet.
The series “At The Edge” was created on the Antigua during my Arctic Circle Residency in June 2023. It consists of 9 works (5 x 7 inch). In the act of assisting water in painting an image, rather than exerting total control, I spread the glacier water with a few drops of watercolour on the paper and I allowed the materials to react organically. The boat, rocked by the waves, was moving the water whilst the paint and water dried. Looking at this process was hypnotizing. The works were balancing at the edge of destruction as any bigger movement of the boat would cause the water to flow off the paper and destroy them.
"At The Edge"
5 x 7 inch
sailing from Gåshamna to Van Muydenbukta
Summer Solstice 21-22.06.2023
The Arctic Circle / Hansbukta /
I came across this quote again by @cristinleach from her book “Negative Space”: “I feel safe in nature. I feel safe in art. They both contain beginnings and ends. They both take me in and out. They both take me to the edge of my heart.” which I love so much. In this particular place in the Arctic all the dimensions seemed to collapse: there was no depth, length, height and time seemed to be irrelevant too. There were no points of references to rest your eyesight on nor to trigger any thoughts. Your mind starts mirroring this vastness and a feeling of dissolving creeps into you. There is no beginning and no end as every end is a beginning of something else and it is ok. It gives you peace and a feeling that you are a small part of something you can’t imagine nor understand but you had a privilege to peep on.