handmade in Ballygarrett Art Studio

I started clearing my studio again today... as I came across things I tried to stay focused. Rubbish, recycling, books, shelves - fabric, wool ...Oh my favourite skein! + a tiny crochet hook.... ah I have to make something... one thing. So I sat and I crocheted this little sweet heart. You will find a different photo of it on Facebook.

Heart felt research. Roisin Markham 2012 ©

I love the fibre with its thin wool with loops on it and I love working with it it felts divinely too. as you can see from this image of a cowl I created in 2010.

Handmade with intent.
Roisin Markham 2010 © 

I make little hug tokens mostly out of felt but I'm exploring other materials...

What do you see?

I have been walking in the forest at Courtown Woods, Wexford on and off  for the last two weeks partly for exercise and partly to be in nature. Holly and ivy abound. But this tree above is in a most interesting clearing. On the day it was taken the sea was howling. What can you see?

Life is full of textures

What is painting for you ?

http://twitter.com/CreativeDynamix

Twitter is an amazing communication tool - it engages people in a complex web of communication activities interlocking relationship, building diverse communication structures, tribes and all in the simplest and most effective way of 140 characters.
Anyway on Friday last I started tweeting about the preview of my exhibition, its over on the CreativeDynamix blog.
What ya mean you have n't seen it yet?
GO straight away and look here, I'll wait till you come back...
Okay what did you think? Which one do you like most? Did you leave a comment, I'd love you to leave a comment... Do you comment on peoples blogs?
@RevezNexus retweeted my preview tweet and I asked him had he had a look this was the reply
@RevezNexus  yep ...& quite like the paintings ..;-)
I thanked him for the the feedback and wished him a good weekend to which he responded
@CreativeDynamix you too creative soul..: what is painting for you?
Now that is a great question. I found myself returning to it all weekend...

PAINTING FOR ME IS

• A pure form of self expression 
• a starting point for a conversation with you and others
• When I start painting I just paint
• I tell stories with colour and brush stroke
• Often when I paint I go to a place between the earth and somewhere else, it is like a mediation - a big soul connection for me; I don't always end up in that place but when work is going well I lift a brush or open a tube of paint and I am there
• I process things when I paint
• I write and journal as a lead in to my painting so it is very much a layered process
• Dynamic energetic
• an important part of my positive mental health (my husband will tell you I'm a complete pain if I'm not painting I get full of angst and tetchy)
• my way of making sense of my world

Where do you funnel your creative energy into? What is that choice for you?

Trusting that you do know

I paint. I journal on the paper or canvas first. Then I paint. I seldom start with an idea of the outcome in my head. This takes courage. This takes detachment. As the painting evolves sometimes quickly I follow an inner sense of knowing and go with what seems to be right. Visually I know when something is right or not. Colour is critical in my abstract paintings, forms present themselves and are typically flowing.
Yesterday morning I finished a painting that I started years ago I'm trying to remember how long ago it was four or five years. I know this because it links to a series of paintings I made titled 'Inland' and one sold at a show I curated for Microsoft Ireland in July 2005. The painting reached a point I liked but was incomplete, it has lived on and off an easel in my studio. I always knew it had potential there was something about the simplicity of the washed background and the depth of the dark green shape. The blue used to go straight and directly to the center it was never right. A few years ago I was determined to finish it, it watch over my studio from my easel for months surveying what I did there. Gently mocking me for not being able to finish it. Until yesterday I never knew how to complete this painting.

inland ii, 2005 - 2010
78 x 55 cm on 360gm watercolour paper.

I had two paintings to finish last week for my up and coming exhibition 'of earth and soul'. I worked on other things for fear that in the process of painting them I would ruin them. Of course that's happened before. I knew I had to quieten myself so I could follow my authentic voice that brings me into my creative flow. Not always easy to get into or stay when so many things require your attention like running a business or being a Mum you run on others time tables. I'm not complaining its just something I constantly work with as part of my reality when making creative work.
I hardly ever paint with white, its just not something that comes up this is buttery creamy white complimenting an almost light green gray.
I'm looking forward to taking this work to the framers Monday morning. Some of today has been spent compiling all the information documenting, measuring, naming and getting ready to push this work out in to the world. Presenting it for sale, for viewing my piece is almost done.
The second painting is green and proving impossible to photograph! it's perplexing.

Pulling work together

At the weekend I finalised three textiles that had been awaiting stitching and beading. I'm pleased with how they turned out. I dropped them to the framer yesterday.

what a relief

Failed freeing the labyrinth from the paper

I'm loving the comments from my twitter tribe on last Sundays blog post Labyrinths and my creative process it contains my video about 'when painting is too flat'. On Thursday I queried its increasing popularity and wondered was it down to the fact it was a video. What do you think?
What I love about finding and rediscovering ways to express, document and explore my creativity is that I'm finally moving my work on, talking, communicating and engaging myself and you in the process. So thanks for reading, listening, watching and responding - lets have more of that.

On Monday as I still could not fill my paint brushes with paint. It was hard to stay with the not knowing. Normally dedicated studio time is over brimming it is unusually for me not to know what is next. A sign of growth perhaps. Standing in that not knowing was challenging - deadline looming etc. But I knew a shift was occurring.
I started my weeks work by folding a painting to make it stand by itself. This developed into montage and collage work. Taking a failed attempt of altering a book (above) to develop the labyrinth relief and freeing it from one sheet of paper.
The raised image in the bottom left corner printed onto tissue paper very nicely so I thought making a stamp seemed like the next step. I sat cutting out the labyrinth... The two shapes the same but different half way through I thought am I cutting out the wall or the path? and I stopped and started taking photos again.

Then the relief moved from a mobile to a sculptural device that I wanted to make stand it took me a while before I found something I was happy. I wanted the semi cut labyrinth to stand tall. I tried various things and settled on a piece of blue tack and or 'glue tack' as my youngest calls it. Deciding it was not important if the a clay modeling tool was seen. With that the object became a whirly gig. I was reminded of fair grounds and twirling skirts of my youth.

The background for the whirly gig and the images of the folded painting at the beginning of this post became a finished piece of work Thursday evening but not before a transfer of this was added. A photograph of an Allium I had given a graphic treatment to. It is one of my favourite Cristophii.
Yes this morning I had a Eureka moment and the painting flowed after more on soon

Labyrinth's for your fingers!

The experience of making a large labyrinth on the beach was quite physical. I have started to make small works using drawing and thinking about labyrinths. my studio is in danger of being over taken.
I think at my exhibition space during the Fringe at Wexford Festival Opera I will run a workshop exploring the purposeful pathway of creativity and the metaphor of labyrinths. I'm having so much fun with the shapes and expressing the basic labyrinth.

My six year old arrived in to my studio announcing I was making finger labyrinths just like the one on the beach. He was very taken with this image

It is made with oil pastels and charcoal. A particularly messy tactile affair to create and gives a great effect and texture. I go back to the technique during process work. I had taken a container of buttons out and picked out some white ones laying them on the charcoal path. My youngest got very excited and wanted to help. For some reason I rejected all but the palest of buttons allowing some flat 'shine-ies'. This was the result which my eight year old also found to be fascinating. Both boys spent over thirty minutes tracing their fingers over the buttons and discussing it. So now I am working on several process pieces involving maps, text, labyrinths, collage, pastels, tracing paper, tissue paper... pva and paint will follow. Something interactive perhaps too.

October saw a flood of new work

October was fun! I started teaching felt making workshops again titled 'The magic of felt', everyone that came rally enjoyed them and were so impressed that they made a piece of fabric out of fleece. It inspired me to make some new felt also. This one is for stitching...

I also picked up these adorable little cups in a local charity shop. The rose motif is so sweet and the green colour still so vivid on this eighty year old hand painted crockery. More photos and information about these cups here.

Of course it was great to work with Wexford County Councils Enterprise and Community Department on my 'creativity for boosting morale and self esteem project' otherwise known as 'the postcard project' on the 16th of October. You can read about it over at the CreativeDynamix blogspot by following both links. The follow up writing thank you and great quotes on the postcards was fun to do and also gave me time to think about the project and further applications of the idea. I was further inspired by the quotes. I started working on a series of images to be printed onto textiles for beading and stitching; the theme maps and quotes. I am working on progressing the designs, patterns and applications to textiles, clothes or prints for framing. A preview of the initial work:

I got exciting news in October that my tender for Art Alongside Programme has been placed second in order of merit! I am waiting to here more about what this actually means but its positive.
What else has been going on? Yes. I have been having very interesting discussions and extending my network in Ireland and globally. Growing my creative lab network of thinkers, doers and creative's all very exciting stuff. I'm really enjoying the way twitter is connecting me to like minds directly. More of that this month.
After my October blog post I spent some time looking at that work from a decade ago.
I realised that something very specific was going on and I was getting to respond to it if I would stop and make space for it. So that is what I did I stopped and made space for that work to look at it to think about it to just be with it.With the help of a friend and healer Catherine Maguire that window from the past has become a door. The transition happened quickly.
Imagine a door opening into a fruitful garden (a cliche I know but that is the image that comes to mind as I write). It feels good to be in the flow of work that is being communicated back and forth between my current reality and my artistic response to a previous reality. It has opened a very interesting space to work in linking loss in general in my life. As I have written before 'Loss is part of my life'. I am processing and expressing that loss and other things in meaningful images. I have posted a new image as the first image in response to the work from 10 years ago. I am working towards an exhibition with experiential workshops based on the work (1999-2009) which will be referred to as the 'inland series' dates March and October 2010.
If the images are meaningful to me that is enough or is it...

Astonished - me? YES astonished!

I recently did an open studio day where I was astonished by the amount of work sitting on my studio shelves. I took out all the dross work, semi finished work and the finished but not framed work and the framed work... yeah I know and I have n't even mentioned the work that was finished and I would never frame.

I astounded myself that I was storing work that was dated 1998.

But what is interesting about this is that I have allowed myself to hold this work and now I find myself reviewing it, recording it and realising that here lies the evolution of myself as an artist. So I think I will do a retrospective of my own work up until my exhibition "Footprints in my heart..." in 2007, during that exhibition my perspective on my creative work changed.

The other atonishing thing that happened is a small body of work gave me a wake up call. In 2000 I made work of a very personal nature... lets be really clear all my work is personal but this work was from the the core of my soul. In 2000 something happened to me that rocked me to the core of my being and subsequently other things happened that stripped me of my ability to cope. In Autumn 2000 I harvested my creativity to deal with a personal loss. I had not looked at this work in a long time just eight pieces. Eight paintings, drawings and images based around me and this loss they shocked me to my core. I could not believe the emotional strengthen of the work. My reaction happened over the last two weeks and continues. As I write I glance over to where the work is stored in a portfolio stacked behind my shelves, hidden from sight in the studio.

My first reaction was: this work is amazing I wanted to share it! Lets find a group based around this experience and go and do some creative work with them! I met a friend about a week after that and shared the idea with her noting as we spoke how deeply the small body of work was prompting me and effecting me. Two days later I crumbled I knew I needed some space, that Sunday my husband took our three sons off and in the quiet of the studio I took out all eight pieces and looked.

I looked and photographed them and looked.

Then I took myself off to our local beach where I did some work outlining a training session, lay on the sand, took some photographs and went for a swim. I reached the conclusion that I needed to be in that group for me. I need this work validated, I required that it would be witnessed... this was shocking. My ego was messing with my heart and my head. manipulation of the highest order. This was not ok to think like this...

From your perspective your probably thinking by making my art public I am looking for validation but that is not how it works for me. My professional relationship with my art goes as follows I make work for others, the process of creation is my piece and it is not until I am happy with the work that it will chosen for finishing at the framer or hung in a venue. It was a distinct point in my career as an artist where I knew I could hang work and be happy with it full stop. Even to the point that if someone disliked my art work I was accepting of their opinion and feedback with no ego attached.

So another few days passed and I got over being indignant and I came to a further evolution.

I am the witness to that work. Right now that is enough. But a dialogue has opened with the work from 2000 and that is exciting. As I move from 2009 to 2010 a decade has been lived and a window from the past leads into the future and how that window becomes a door is an interesting question.
Part of the reason for this post is still around creating space for our stories. I did not have space to share the loss, sorrow and downright grief. In some ways it is still unresolved perhaps because it is around grief it will always be there. But with compassion for myself I aim to create that space and share with you the continuing story. Not the visual work, not yet, that might follow in due course I have some work to do first.

If you'd like to see the photographs I took on the beach that day I have added them to my redbubble site, click here to be taken there...

I have written on loss before behind my paintings I journal, I process, I write.