“Is this a fast painting or a slow one?” My husband asks.
This question gives me pause.
“A fast one” I reply.
Portnoo Colours (Donegal) by Emma Cownie
My paintings usually take days to complete. On average three days. A smaller one quicker. Commissions are still “slow” paintings.
Lately, though I have taken to completing paintings in a single sitting. This may well be several hours, but its a single sitting.
Rocky Ground Bun An Inver by Emma Cownie
The results are more sponanteous-looking. The process feels slightly out of control. Often I think “I have bitten off more than I can chew” here. But I stick with it. Years of painting have taught me to ignore the impulse to give up. To push on, even when when it looks a bit ugly.
There may well be things wrong; colours or details but they dont matter too much. I will alter them if they really bug me. Mostly I dont. The brush strokes are broken and incomplete. In some places they are deliberately rough. The canvas shows through in places. Often I am uncertain if I like the painting when I stop. Its usually a bit of a surprise. I have to fight my perfectionism.
Narin Rise, Donegal by Emma Cownie
I am racing ahead of my thoughts. Ahead of my critical mind that tells me its not good enough and to keep painting. Now I refuse to listen and keep going. It’s intense and exhausting.
Over Cruit Island, Donegal and painting by Emma Cownie
My father died in June this year. He was 92. My heart is broken. He was a lovely, funny and kind man and I miss him terribly.
I am delighted that Peter Zantingh, a Dutch blogger, wrote this an account of Gola and my work. I have translated it for you to read (well, Google did). You can read the original here.
“In the autumn of 2018, Emma Cownie looked out from the Irish mainland at an island she could not get to. It seemed so close. She could see the rocks off the coast and beyond them, scattered seemingly at random across the rolling land, the whitewashed cottages. Some were abandoned, others clearly still inhabited, or used as summer homes.
Gola Island is one of 365 islands off the Irish coast. It is just two square kilometres in size. No one knows exactly how many people live there, because there are more in the summer than in the winter. Ferryman Sabba only goes up and down between June and September.
But in 2022, there were fifteen people living on Gola, according to official figures.
Emma Cownie is a British artist. She studied medieval history at Cardiff University and taught at a secondary school for a while. On 29 February 2012, she was hit by a car. It was, in retrospect, what prompted her to take up painting full-time. The days in front of the class were exhausting, almost all contact with other people in fact, she was startled by every sudden sound. A few years before the accident her dog had been run over on a busy road.
Painting helped.
In the days after she had stood on the mainland looking at those houses in the distance she painted Spring Light on Gola. It came, she told me, ‘out of a kind of longing for the island’.
In the spring she went again. It was early April, sunny but chilly, a cold wind blowing along the coast. Her husband Séamas was with her, their dog Mitzy too. To get the best view of the island – again there was no ferry – they walked along long stretches of beach and climbed on granite boulders, almost pink in the spring light. From here she could see the houses that had recently been renovated and modernised.
That summer she was finally able to go there. ‘There are hardly any cars’, she told me about it. ‘Just a few tractors, no telephone poles or electricity pylons and only a few other people. Other than that, just birdsong and wind. It’s bliss.’
Spring Light on Gola (Sold)
*I emailed Emma Cownie last month with a simple question. One of her paintings was used on the cover of one of my favorite books, Foster by Claire Keegan. I wanted to discuss that book in my newsletter, and I would like to show that painting as well. Would that be okay? I would mention her name and link to her website.
She responded the same day, and we got to talking. She said that the painting I had asked about was called Traditional Two Storey House, Gola, and that it was nice to hear from someone from the Netherlands, because although she regularly sees Dutch campers in Donegal, the county in the northwest of Ireland where she lives part of the time, she has never sold work to anyone from the Netherlands.
The title of the painting made me curious. Gola? What was that? That’s how I became fascinated with the island in my own way.
At one time, there were about two hundred people living there, who made a living from fishing and small farms. But after 1930, the population began to decline. Especially in the winter, it was easier to earn money in the cities, especially those of Scotland and England, and fewer and fewer people returned for the summers. In 1966, the island’s school closed; with only nine pupils (there used to be sixty), it no longer had a right to exist. The few families with young children were forced to move to the mainland – and once the last family with children had left, the community was doomed.
I read this last in Gola: The Life and Last Days of an Island Community (1969) by F.H. Aalen and H. Brody, which I ordered for a few euros on boekwinkeltjes.nl or Abebooks. I think I mainly wanted to know what happened when the last ones left. How does a group of people dissolve itself?
Brody, a sociologist who wrote the part about the last days of the community by the two authors, saw a kind of laconic group feeling among those who were still there at the end of the sixties. Everyone wanted to stay, if the rest stayed too. Everyone thought it was okay to go, as long as everyone else went too.
The most intriguing aspect of each islander’s account of his own predicament is his insistence that it all depends on the others. […] The general attitude is one of wait and see – what the others do. But all of the Gola people are waiting on one another in this way, and do not seem to mind the impasse that this conditional planning involves. Of ten islanders who related their plans, nine said they would like to stay, but it depended on the others. One man said he would stay so long as he had a dog with him, and could not see any advantage to life away from the island. Apart from that one man, all stated they would be glad to remain on Gola, but did not really mind leaving.
The authors also contributed to a short documentary for the Irish public broadcaster RTÉ from the same year, which shows how one family, the O’Donnells, leaves the island. They lock the door and walk with their dog, a long-haired collie, to a motor boat in the harbor. They are all wearing black. (Screenshots from the film below)
Five people remained: fisherman Eddie, fisherman Tadhg, postman Nora and her husband John, and ninety-year-old Mary. It would not be long for them either.
What was left behind? The island had no shop, no pub, not even a church. “The islanders worship on the mainland when the weather is good enough to make a safe crossing,” Brody wrote in 1969. Just over thirty houses remained, most in poor condition. The schoolhouse and the post office. Wooden boxes and fishing nets in the harbour, where a statue of the Virgin Mary, housed in a stone shrine, continued to look out. Two pegs on a washing line.
Between 1969 and 2002, Gola was an uninhabited island. In Dances With Waves: around Ireland by Kajak (1998), Brian Wilson (not the Beach Boys guy, another Brian Wilson) writes about the time he went ashore during his nearly two-thousand-mile kayak trip all the way around Ireland. He hoped to find some peace and shelter that day, but he encountered “the eerie atmosphere of a ghost town”. Fishing boats lay rotting in the harbour among the washed-up debris.
But he found something more hopeful in the cottages. They were “abandoned, but not in decay”.
[…] one felt as though, like faithful dogs, they were just waiting for their owners to return. More than that, it was as if the island itself was still waiting. And the people came again. They came back. Somewhere around the turn of the millennium, the first ones crossed. Today, most of the cottages are still uninhabited, but in summer the sounds and movements of people join those of the cormorants, guillemots and gannets.
Emma Cownie has made more than 25 paintings of Gola in recent years.
For Traditional Two-storey House, Gola, the painting that made me contact her, she returned to the ‘rules’ she had set for herself a few years earlier. These rules – not coincidentally – coincide with how she wanted to organise her life after the car accident and the difficult time that followed: no cars, no people, bright light.
Furthermore, there must be shadows, preferably diagonal, in simple shapes. The painting must be about the interplay between shadows and man-made constructions, the tension between 3D buildings and 2D shadows.
She also wanted to think longer and better about colour. Not to choose the brightest colour, purely for effect, as she had done before, but to work more subtly. In a new series of works based on the houses on Gola Island, including Traditional Two-storey House, she resisted the urge to make the shadows very dark, the sky pale pink and the grass yellow and bright green. “I tried to keep the shapes and colours as simple as possible without it being a cartoon,” she told me. “I wanted to capture the essence of the place.”
The Traditional House, (Gola)
She painted the picture in January 2021, during a Covid-19 lockdown in Wales, where she was then living. That summer, she and Séamas moved to Donegal, in the north of Ireland.
It was the following summer, 2022, that she was approached by the prestigious London publishers Faber & Faber: they wanted to use Traditional Two-storey House for the cover of Claire Keegan’s Foster, originally published in 2010. “I didn’t realise what an honour it was until I got a copy of the book and read it,” she said. “I cried at the end.”
Foster by Claire Keegan, Published by Faber
Is there a writing lesson in this? I don’t know. Maybe that there’s more to everything. Maybe it’s worth following your interests and fascinations without reservation. To notice it – this interests me, this grabs me – and follow that line, see where it takes you.
I did this interview back in March this year with artist and magician Michael Callahan and co-host Ann Rosenquist Fee, executive director of the Arts Center, St Pauls, Minnestota, USA. In it I talk about how I came to be an artist, my process, my love of colour and paint brushes!
There is a unique architectural gem, perched upon the high cliffs above the shores of the north Derry coastline. It is an elegant Roman-style round temple; a beautiful rotunda. It is a wonderful surprise. There is none other in Ireland. It looks out across Lough Foyle to Donegal to the north and on a clear day the Scottish Isles can be seen to the north-east. This remarkable building is Mussenden Temple.
Mussenden Temple from Downhill Strand
It was built by the eccentic and extravagant Earl Bishop of Derry, Frederick Hervey (b.1730-1806). The 18th century is full of mischievious and surprising characters and he’s one of the best. Frederick Hervey was in turns controversial, revolutionary and yet both shocking and popular in his own life time. He came from an aristocratic English family, the 3rd son of an earl with big estates in Suffolk. Having two elder brothers he probably never expected to inherit from his father. He first tried law and then became a vicar hoping for a career in the church. His family connections helped a lot. He became chaplain to the king, George III in 1763, who later called him ‘that wicked prelate’ .
When his eldest brother George became Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in 1766, he managed to wangle the post of Bishop of Cloyne for Frederick and then, shortly afterwards, in 1768, Bishop of Derry, one of the wealthiest Irish sees.
Frederick threw himself into being Bishop of Derry, reportedly visiting every parish in the diocese and embarking on a number of notable building projects in the city of Londonderry including building St Columbs Cathedral’s first spire (it had to be replaced later as it was too heavy) many fine building and the first (wooden) bridge over the River Foyle, earning himself the nickname ‘the Edifying Bishop’.
In 1779 his brother George died and Frederick became the 4th Earl of Bristol, inheriting an income of £20,000 a year. He now even more money. He spent a fortune on building and collecting art.
He was widely travelled and had a fine appreciation of art, especially Greek and Italian. He spent 18 years of his life in Italy and spoke Italian fluently. Frederick was also well-read and he was an expert in flora and fauna and publicised The Giant’s Causeway. The Earl Bishop did extensive research into the origins of the Causeway and promoted his findings to the scientific community and wider world.
He also visited Staffa Island on the Western Isles of Scotland to confirm the links with similar columnar formations. In 1782, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society for his efforts.
The Earl Bishop was a colourful character and was clearly someone people loved to gossip about. There are many examples of his eccentricity. It is said that he made his clergy run a leapfrog race on Downhill beach to see who would win the best area!
He had an eye for the ladies and was reputed to have had several affairs. Among his mistresses was society beauty Madam Ritz, as well as possibly Emma Hamilton who was also the mistress of Admiral Lord Nelson.
Bramante’s Tempietto, Rome 1502
It was on his tour of Europe that he fell in love with Bramante’s Temple in Rome. He reportedly tried to buy it and have it moved back to Britain but the Pope would not let him. So the Frederick Hervey built his own. Several of them. He built Ballyscullion, near Bellaghy, Co Derry, in 1787 to his own extravagant designs. The façade was inspired by St Peter’s in Rome, and measured 350ft across, with a central rotunda flanked by curved wings and a large pavilion at each end. It sadly, no longer exists.
Ballyscullion House
He also started Ickworth House, in Suffolf in 1795 which was completed by his successors.
Ickworth House, Suffolk, England
His first rotunda, however, was Musseden Temple, built in 1873. It was built as a library on the cliff edge of his estate at Dunbo, County Londonderry, Northern Ireland. Dunbo derives from the Irish Dún Bó, meaning ‘fort of the cows’. Dunbo was renamed Downhill Demense and an incredible 300,000 trees were planted on the estate; although there is little sign of them today.
A huge castle was built with the assistance of number of architects (Frederick kept firing them) including Michael Shanahan of Cork and Placido Columbani of Milan, who was supervising plumbing and the installation of water closets, a swanky innovation for the time. So we are not entirely sure who designed the rotunda/temple on the cliffs.
Mrs Daniel Mussenden (born Fridiswide Bruce, d.1785) Unknow French artist c.1780
The temple was dedicated to his lovely young cousin Frideswide Mussenden (neé Bruce) who had recently married the rich banker, Daniel Mussenden, had given birth to a child. The temple was meant to a be delightful retreat for her to escape to and look out at the wonderful view or read some of the many books there. A fire was kept lit at all time to save the books (and her) from the damp Irish weather. Sadly, Frederick’s terrible reputation with women meant that their “friendship” was gossiped about, in the press. The fragile Frideswide was horrified to be written about in the Freeman’sJournal, even if she wasn’t mentioned by name, and it may well have supposedly sent her into a physical decline, dying at the age of tender age of just 22 in 1785.
There is a minature of her in the National Gallery of Ireland painted when she was 17 in 1780, presumably when she had just married Daniel. She has a very sweet and tender face; you can easily imagine her upset at the nasty rumours.
So the library on the cliffs is a poignant place. Built for a young woman who perhaps only used it for a short time before she died. It was always close to the cliff edge, reported 30 foot away when it was built. I think that is an exaggeration, as maps from the early 19th century do not show that much land between the temple and the cliff edge. The cliff has eroded and about 20 years ago the National Trust did extensive work to stablise the cliff and underpin the temple.
OSNI 1831 Downhill
I am very bad at remembering to take work in progress photos of my work. I often get too caught up in painting the piece. I am also usually very anxious about a painting until I have practically finished it!
This is a painting done with acrylic paints. I work with thin layers of paint, building up the colours and adjusting them, lighter or darker with each new layer. Often I like the painting best when its about a third done – I am confident I know where I am going with it and it still has “potential”.
Here there are still some “problems” to solve, the shadow on the temple needs to be darkened.
Frederick Hervey was a fascinating man, who had a long and varied life and I could write a lot more about him. He was minor celebrity in his day, he travelled widely on the Continent, where he kept company and correspondence with leading philosophers, princes, politicians, scientists, artists, architects and writers—including Voltaire, Goethe, Benjamin Franklin, John Strange, Jeremy Bentham, James Boswell and the Pope. He has been described as “a bad father, and worse husband, a determined deist, [who was] very blasphemous in his conversation”.
Yet he was a generous man who treated the people of Derry well, whether Catholic, Protestant or Non-Conformist (a type of Protestant that was discriminated against by the state at the time). He argued all his life for religious tolerance.
Earl-Bishop with His Granddaughter in Gardens of Villa Borghese c1790 National_Gallery_Ireland.
He believed the answer to the Irish question or the Irish problem of a disaffected Catholic majority is, was not meanness but generosity. Just as God wins our prayers of thanksgiving by His extravagant generosity, so England could learn how to win over Irish Catholics by giving them more, not less. He bankrolled the first Catholic chapel in Derry—Long Tower Church—and personally chose the magnificent Italian marble that adorns the altar.
He undertook public works to relieve poverty, and was a generous patron to the Catholic population of Derry.
He died in Italy in 1803, trying to recover his art collection that had been conviscated by Napoleon Bonaparte. Hundreds of artists attended his funeral in Rome and he was buried at his ancestral home, Ickworth in Suffolk, where there is an obelisk paid for by public subscription by the Catholics, Presbyterians and Protestants of Derry.
Fanad is a finger of land that lies between Lough Swilly and Mulroy Bay on the north coast of County Donegal, Ireland. It is not that easy to get to and the the survival of the Irish language is testiment that relative isolation.
Lambing season at Fanad Head (Donegal) SOLD
Fanad Lighhouse (Donegal). Is one of the 12 Great lighthouses of Ireland. It was built in 1886 at Fanad Head (although the station was originally established in 1817). The lighthouse, or more acrrately, the harbour light, marks the entrance into Lough Swilly which forms a natural harbour.
Fanad Lighthouse (Donegal) SOLD
I have painted this isolated structure several times before. I have always enjoyed painting the northernly light on Fanad. I have only have painted it in acrylics. That’s not a delibertae choice, more one of circumstance because at times I have had limited space, and I dont want to use oil paints with kittens close at hand.
Over to Fanad Lighthouse (Donegal) _Emma Cownie SOLD
I think acrylics suit the airiness of the subject matter. After a couple of years working out how to use them, I have settled on a technique of light layers of paint that allow the underlying colour to show through. This can give a transulent quality to the colour. This is in contrast to the relatively flat areas of colous I use for the larger areas of colour such as sky or the sea.
My latest painting was an experiment in composition. We used an image from a drone shot done by my artist husband, Seamas (James Henry Johnson).
In this piece, I wanted to create a sense of space from the mountains of the Inishowen Peninsula in the distance. The distant mountains were layered with bluish white until I got the right impression of distance.
I often find myself looking at the tiny Fanad lighthouse far off in the distance when I am at Lisfannon on the Inishowen Penisula. There is a sign comemorating a famous Atlantic storm that happened in 1748. this storm threatened to sink The Greyhound, the ship of one John Newton, a slave trader. John was so frightened that he called out to God for mercy. This moment marked a profound spiritual conversion, and many years later he wrote the words for the hymn “Amazing Grace” one of my favourite hymns, and to also campaign for the abolition of slavery.
There is some confusion how many storms there were . One website claims the terrible tempset happened far away out in the Atlantic because it took John Newton another four weeks after his conversion to sail into Lough Swilly and arrive at Derry/Londonderry. The Amazing Grace.ie site however, makes it clear a second storm happened in Lough swilly itself as it quotes John’s journal ” We saw the island of Tory and the next day anchored in Lough Swilly in Ireland. This was the 8th day of April, just four weeks after the damage we sustained from the sea. When we came into this port, our very last victuals was boiling in the pot; and before we had been there two hours, the wind began to blow with great violence. If we had continued at sea that night in our shattered condition, we must have gone to the bottom. About this time I began to know that there is a God that hears and answers prayer.” It’s got to be said, that John Newton really took his time putting his evangelical beliefs into action because he went back to being a slave trader for another five years before he eventually retired and became a minister in 1757!
The heaving sea at the foot of the massive lighthouse rock intrigued me. The Atlantic Ocean has such a bulk and stregth, even on a relatively fine day, I am not surprised that John Newton was terrified by its strength far away from the Donegal coast. I wondered about the long and difficult process of building this structure all those years ago in a remote location. Yet, this lighthouse has stood the test of time and proudly marks the entrance to Lough Swilly and can be seen from inland and further along the coast.
Here’s a photo-story about our move to Ireland. The photos are all by Séamas Johnston, my husband. He is also the architect of the move, the new studios and our new life. He’s been amazing. It’s great to see all his hard work finally come together.
Packing the Car, Swansea (before much stuff was packed)
Endless Packing! It felt never ending.
Lateral Flow Test – one line means no covid. We discover that our tonsils are not that dangley bit at the back of your throat. We also did a PCR test but there are no photos of that.
Irvine Moving Solutions – they are moving our stuff – we saw their van coming off the Belfast ferry at Birkenhead!
Stena Line Ferry Terminal at Birkenhead, Liverpool. It was a long wait to get on.
The otherside of the Irish Sea. Early Morning Belfast from the ferry
How everything has grown at Meadow Cottage!
The studio window
Séamas reflected in the studio windows
Hattie doing “Cat Patrol with her eyes” on a new view
I love the view from the studio. I cant wait until my stuff arrives from storage and I can get back to painting.
Just to warn you. I have access to wifi this weekend (on a 3 day trial) but we decided to use a different company for our internet but they can’t install it for another 10 days so my responses will be delayed. My business remains closed until the middle of this month (July 2021).
Port Eynon and Horton from Salt House, Gower (A recent commission)
Just a quick notice to say that my shop on this website (www.emmafcownie.com), and shops on Artfinder.com and Singulart.com will be closed for a month from today. This is to cope with final packing, tidying up and a million and one things we have to do before leaving Wales as well as the period of self-isolation we have to undergo in Donegal (14 days, possibly less, depending on the results of our PCR tests after day 5).
I like this painting. I find it very calming. I especially like the clouds. I also like the emptiness of the beach. That is something I aspire to in my home.
This painting is actually wraped in bubblewrap in in the upstairs hallway. It had been hanging in our bedroom with three others for a couple of weeks. They had been refugees. They were evacuated from my attic studio because I had needed to paint the ceiling. I have since painted the bedroom wall. I still have the floor to finish.
Almost painted!
All of my other paintings are wrapped in bubblewrap and stored elsewhere. We are in the midsts of packing up and redecorating the house to put it on the market and move to Ireland. It is a mammoth task. The more we do the more it seems to grow. We are at the wall-papering-and-painting-floors stage. I say “we” but I should say “he”. My husband, Séamas, has done 98% of it. He has spent months and months working at it. I have been putting stuff in boxes and labelling them. I have only recently started helping with the decorating. It is exhausting. I wake up every morning and think, “I am so tired”. It has taken me weeks but I am 80% there. Unfortuantely, I feel like I have been 80% there for several weeks now. I once read somewhere that you should start packing a month before you intend to move. I have been doing this for at least three!
I initially spent months trying to pretend it was not happening because I found the thought of it too stressful. I am not alone, many people (only 40% amazingly) say that moving house is more stressful than going through a divorce and most people (60%) say they are put off moving because of the change involved. That’s me.
I have been getting rid of stuff for well over a year and a half now. I started with selling my surf boards on ebay then my old academic books on Amazon, but the pandemic put a stop to that. I have been getting rid of other stuff lately; clothes, china, novels, picture frames. I have found it utterly exhausting and it provokes all sorts of emotions, not all of them pleasant. There is a wierd sort of grieving in throwing things out.
A visit to the Council Dump (sorry, Recycling Centre) is one of my favourite things to do. It takes so much emotional and physical energy to get stuff there, it’s a joy to come home without it. There has been the occasional jumper or pair of shoes that I decided to keep or put on ebay rather than send to a charity shop, but mostly it’s gone. I cant believe how much stuff I still have. It’s like a bottomless pit. Everytime I think I am getting there I open another cupboard or wardrobe and find more! Our house certainly has a lot of storage space.
This process has been like shedding many “skins” that I inhabited in the past. One skin has been the academic books from when I was a lecturer and researcher in Medieval History. Another were the “tidy” clothes and lots of History books and DVDs, from when I was a school teacher. I threw out a lot of running gear. I have accepted that after breaking my leg so badly that I will never pound the streets for exercise again. So the boots and shoes with anything but the flatest of heels went for the same reason. I also finally admitted to myself that I will never go back into the classroom as a teacher. It has been 4 years now. Who am I kidding? I didn’t renew my teacher’s licence this year. What a relief. Come to think of it, I don’t think I was sent a renewal notice. Never mind. It amounts to the same thing.
This has made me see how we gather “stuff” around us. I think I do it to give myself a sense of security and identity. Maybe this is because I moved house a lot as a child. I lived in 5 houses in three different parts of the country and went to 7 different schools before I was aged 11. Apparently, moving house when you are a child isn’t terribly good for you. Setting off for university, my father had to tell me to decant part of my record collection because there just wasn’t enough space in his car for my stuff and us! He had to bring it all back at the end of term too! As an adult I have lived in three different cities; Cardiff, London and Swansea. We have been in Swansea for 21 years. I have gathered a lot of “moss” that time. Séamas has also gathered a fair bit of DIY stuff, those sealing guns in particular (see illustration).
Sealing/Caulking Gun
I don’t know where I get my hoarding from. Not my mother that’s for sure. She has been doing her version of Swedish Death Cleaning for years. “Welsh Death Cleaning”, you could call it. It is a sort of a minimalism for older people. She very disciplined about clearing stuff out so that she can either a) move smaller one day or b) so we don’t have to do this when she is no longer with us. No object or piece of clothing stays in my parents home for very long if a) it is no longer worn on a regular basis b) regularly used or c) very decorative. Otherwise, off it goes to the local charity shop. Many years ago, when my sister moved to London “temporarily” to do an MA at the Royal College of Art, she left her old Morris Minor car at my parent’s house . After a few years, when it was it clear that she wasn’t moving back home, my mother sold the car. She gave the money to my sister. Jane is still a bit mifted about it. If you left to her it would still be in the drive! I guess all that moving house over the years taught my mother discipline.
When we bought this house over 20 years ago, I declared I was never going to move house again. My mother said that’s what women say after giving birth, but most of them go on to have more children! Yes, life has a way of making you eat your words. Here I am preparing to move house.
My tendancy to gather of stuff accelerated after I had my breakdown. I once tried to do the Marie Kondo thing (in fact I found a few rolled up in my airing cupboard Maire Kondo-style) but I got overwhelmed. I couldn’t keep it up. I lacked the energy to do anything much, let alone decide what to chuck out and then do it. It is a form of hoarding. Yes, it’s an ugly word. I am not as bad as those poor souls they make TV programmes on Channel 5 about, yet. I am still somewhere on that unpleasant spectrum. It’s a sort of compulsion. I can’t let go. Breaking my leg, didn’t help either. When everyone else was decluttering in the early days of the first lockdown, I was confined to the bedroom! Then, when I was ready to get rid of stuff, all the non-essential charity shops were shut! For months.
The strange thing is that once I have cleared space, I can see and appreciate what I have choosen to keep better. I now look at stuff and think, do I really need that? I go back to the packed boxes and take things out; thinking: why did I pack that? It’s like the ebb and flow of the sea. I clear out stuff, feel some satisfaction and then I find more stuff and have to go through the process all over again. The other side of the coin is that twice yesterday, I went to find something, only to realised that I had chucked it out!
I need to be tougher and get rid of more stuff. I follow “Be more with Less” decluttering account on Instagram in the hope that some of the inspirational quotes will sink in. I know I have a long, long way to go. The only “skin” I want now is that of an artist and blogger. I don’t kid myself that I won’t buy more stuff in the future, but I hope I will be better at shedding it more regularly. I will be following my mother’s example! She’ll laugh at that!
Here’s another of my recent paintings, it was also hanging in the bedroom.
On Thursday I did something I have never done before. I did a presentation to a bunch people in London via the internet. During the darkness winter days of lock down I have sat at my computer and listened to quite a few people give presentations on subjects as diverse as Art (Jennifer Pockinski, Elizabeth O’Reilly), Irish Language (Manchán Mangan), Irish Bogs (Creative Rathangan Meithea), Irish Cottages (Ulster Architectuaral Society) and Literature (Gabriel Byrne) and thoroughly enjoyed them.
Artfinder: Mental Health Awareness Week
This Thursday, I got my chance to see behind the scenes of these sorts of events and talk about my experiences for Mental Health Awareness Week with On Thursday I did something I have never done before. I did a presentation to a bunch people in London via the internet. During the darkness winter days of lock down I have sat at my computer and listened to quite a few people give presentations on subjects as diverse as Art (Jennifer Pockinski, Elizabeth O’Reilly), Irish Language (Manchán Mangan), Irish Bogs (Creative Rathangan Meithea), Irish Cottages (Ulster Architectuaral Society) and Literature (Gabriel Byrne) and thoroughly enjoyed them.the team behind the online gallery, Artfinder (www.artfinder.com). I was also featured in a news blog on their website. During the pandemic many people are probably used using Zoom or Teams for their work meetings but I have never had this experience before. I think this is why I suggested a quick trial hook up the day the before. I had also seen things go slightly awry during those webinmars. My personal favourite was when the speaker’s laptop battery suddenly died and he had to rush off to find another laptop and the chair had to fill in for ten minutes whilst he did this!
Googlemeet and Zoom
I am so glad that we did a practice run with Jane and Kirsty. We started with Zoom. The sound on my laptop was dreadful and everything sounded like it was underwater. Jane and Kirsy sounded like a couple of unintelligable dolphins! Between my old Laptop and a ropey internet connection (Now TV, or “Not, Now TV” as we like to call it in this house), it wasn’t working. I wanted the throw the laptop across the room, cry and/or swear a lot. Obviously, I did neither.
What I wanted to do to my laptop
Eventually, Kirsty, the tech genius, came up with the idea of doing the meeting with Google Meet. “It is very low tech”, she said. “That’ll suit me just fine, I am low tech”, I said! The rest of the test worked well and we had a chat about what it was like working remotely.
On the afternoon of the presentation I waited nervously for the meeting to start and even said a prayer beforehand. Then all these youthful faces pinged onto the screen. More and more until it was full with 9 boxes and more names listed along the top of the screen of people I could not see. I am not sure if the prayer helped because I still had problems getting my screen to share my powerpoint. Thankfully Michal (the CEO) talked me through which buttons to press , in which order and we were finally in business.
Not the Artfinder Team – but my screen did look a bit like this
I then had that wierd moment before you start speaking that seemed to stretch on for ever. I looked at my screen. All I could see was my presentation, no faces now, which was odd too. I took a big breath and began.
OK – I am just going to give you the highlights.
In 2006 I started having panic attacks on the motorway – I saw a couple of (not very good) therapist/hypnotherapists and bought a lot of books on panic attacks. It did not solve my problem. I avoided motorways.
2012 Minor Car Accident – which led to me developing PTSD & Burn Out (also known as a “Breakdown”). This resulted in hypervigilance/nightmares/flashbacks/inability to concentrate/exhaustion. I found a very good therapist and had EMDR therapy (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) and during the course of this therapy started painting every day. It was a very slow recovery and it took a year to return to work part time
How art has helped me with my recovery / mental health over the years: – I find it calming, restorative, meditative and it boosts my fragile self-esteem. It also improves my concentration & energy levels. It provides a positive focus to my life, I find the colours therapeutic and painting also provides an intellectual challenge as there is a lot of problem-solving in painting. It also provides social connections through blogging & social media
As this was a presentation to Artfinder staff I talked about how important Artfinder has been in my journey into becoming a professional artist.
My husband, Séamas, joined the Artfinder site on my behalf in April 2013. He also set up a website a blog for me.
My first sale on Artfinder was in June 2013. It was a giclée print of “A Tenby Reflection” for £39
I sold my first painting via Artfinder July 2013
In the last 8 years I have sold over 800 works via Artfinder and gained over 6000 followers, which makes me the most followed artist on the site!
I left teaching in 2017 and became a full-time artist – I put a lot more time and energy into my painting, my website, blogging and social media sites
Early Work
Tenby Reflections (2013) My first sale on Artfinder
Perpetual Light (2013)
The Light Refracted
Winter Morning Light on Parkmill
A Slender Light
Gower Paintings
Evening on Three Cliffs
Coloured Sands at Three Cliffs
Ireland
Around Cloughcor (Arranmore)
From Cloughcor To Maghery (Arranmore)
Mental Health, the Covid-19 pandemic and other emergencies
PTSD – I tend to think of the worse possible outcome to most things at the best of times. I usually have to talk myself down from my initial extreme reaction, but for once in early 2020 I was RIGHT! This new virus was an end-of-the-world scenario!
I kept a diary to help cope with the sense of panic and anxiety I was experiencing and then. I took my dogs for a walk in the woods on my own (Séamas was in Ireland)
I tripped and broke my leg and had to wait 5 hours for the emergency services to rescue me. You can read that long story here.
I spent 9 days in hospital waiting for an operation to pin my leg.
During my long recovery from this experience, I reflected on the differences between how we all, myself included, treat physical and mental health issues. With physical health issues there is the physical pain (there was certainly lots of that), the practical difficulties of getting around, frustration at the loss of independence and the physical exhaustion as your body heals. I also discovered that this sort of trauma was easy to talk about. There was a lot of public sympathy & concern from people.
It was a lot easier to deal with than mental health issues. I was delighted to realise that I dealt with the trauma and pain with (mostly) good humour and fortitude – although that wore off a bit when my rehab took a whole lot longer than I was expecting. I felt mentally sound even if my body wasn’t.
In contrast, when I experienced my mental breakdown, there was a lot of isolation, shame, fear, embarrassment on my part as well as physical exhaustion. I had always been a tough, independent and reliable person and I hated that my breakdown changed that. I still struggle with accepting my limitations. It was clear that a lot of other people felt sorry for me. That was not easy to bear either.
One of the few positives of the pandemic is that people have been more open about how they have struggled with their mental health. I think that it has shown people that a lot of mental health issues are related to having to bear “unbearable” situations. My huband, Séamas, says I didn’t have a breakdown down but a break through. My life, as it was, was making me ill and it had to change. During the pandemic that unbearable situation was universal. Everyone had to deal with having our freedoms curtailed, especially the freedom to see our family and friends. Many people people discovered that the joy of doing things with your hands/body such as gardening, yoga, painting, baking saved their sanity. I know that in my darkest hour I was making scones with Séamas! Art continues to keep me sane.
I answered a number of questions from Michal and staff at Artfinder. What came up: Had I painted before the 2012 accident? What can Artfinder do to help people with Mental Health Issues? How do you help someone with mental health issues? Different therapies and medications and how they might work for person and not for another.
The presentation wasn’t recorded, and in a way I am glad about that. I don’t think I would have been so open about my experiences if I thought what I said could be picked over and examined by people who weren’t present at the time. It was a strange situation to give a talk to a group of people I couldn’t really see. When I have given talks before I have had people’s faces and body language to help gauge their reactions to what I was saying. This time I didn’t. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the whole thing afterwards because of this although the staff were all very positive. I hope that my audience got something out of the experience!
I will finish with a quote from “Anthem” by the Canadian singer and poet, Leonard Cohen.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in.
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