Welcome to open conversations
‘Open Conversations’ comes to light in Ireland, when visiting a friend and fellow artist Yvonne Teskey Healy.
We intend to paint in a remote coastal area in Ireland. As the weather turns wet and cold we remain at her home in Ballingarry, County Limerick. Her house is located in a beautiful rural setting of lush green fields and rolling hills where the eye follows the slope into the distance.
On the first morning, I put forward an idea that had come to me through the night. The next day we draw and paint in silence, together, without a plan of what to paint, a direction to follow, or an intended outcome of where it will take us. Our Conversations begin with our first marks.
Our first marks
Attaching paper on the window of Yvonne’s living room, her Winter studio, to stand facing the *support (*the base to paint onto, in this situation, paper). We continue like this, and a couple of days later, we place the work onto the floor to work horizontally.
Yvonne and I begin each day with a quiet practice, a meditative reflection, a personal exchange or a moving meditation.
The completion of the day is spent outside in nature, trudging along hill tracks that border fields where potato crops were grown in the great famine of the mid-1800s or in exploration of weathered marks, motifs and symbols, found on large stone blocks and walls of ancient Celtic ruins in nearby villages.
The ancient marks are silent influences, emerging from us as we make our marks on the paper.
Making marks together
Painting, sharing our work, we consecutively make marks. Our different approach through the marks, techniques, and sense of colour begins to form the painting.
Our focus is on making, and we explore and delve in. A spontaneous play, through continuous doing, drawing and painting without any final destination or restrictions from nominating specific outcomes.
The marks we sense and feel are expressions, the marks speak to us as we create. It is known from an intuitive place.
Mark-making becomes play.
The marks are our conversation, our exchange grows. In a silent conversation, we observe what takes place on the paper.
The marks guide us into a conversation without words. An ongoing visual dialogue, noticing and responding to each other in the moment.
Marks pour onto the paper, one after the other without the mind driving, without tension to make a ‘work of ART’.
A playful movement expressed in an exploration of mark-making. With our inner natural senses in action, each mark finds a place on the paper, part of life forming a visual.
To be continued…
