Blog

Easter is comin early this year and this is the last week in college before the Easter break. We're having assessments on at the moment and I have put up some photos of my studio space in the studio section. I spent the last week making a series of small oil paintings on board and really enjoyed the immediateness of painting them wet on wet in one go. Previous to that I've been making two large paintings using mixed media, but making the small ones inbetween has made me re-think a few techniques and challenge my own ideas for the new paintings I have in mind, which have now slightly changed in their format and execution.

I have also made a scale model of one of the studios in college where I have proposed to make an installation for the degree show. Fingers crossed that I'll get the space needed to realise my ideas. I am trying to source some cheap vintage furniture at the moment, but it's not the easiest thing in Galway. Ireland was quite poor back in the 60's and 70's and there isn't much available at all compared to the abundance of items from this period available in Scandinavia. I'm going to do a bit of work during the easter break as well as there isn't that long left before the degreeshow when you think about it.

It's been some time since I wrote anything in the blog, even though I've updated the site with several things in the meantime. I am in the middle of my project at the moment. I spent most of November making an animated video called "is this Utopia?", which is based on the research material from Stockholm. You can view it in the Honours Degree section, which is also a new addition to the site. For the Christmas assessments I made a small installation in the corridor with a TV where people could view the animation.

I have also been busy with my degree thesis in the weeks leading up to Christmas as well as the time immediately after. Now it is bound and handed in and I can fully concentrate on the studio work. The title of my thesis is How have post modern artists drawn upon Modernist architecture in their work? I am discussing the work of Thomas Demand, Matthias Weischer, Rachel Whiteread, Gordon matta-Clark and Rut Blees-Luxembourg.

The Christmas was spent with the family in Sweden and now since I came back I've got stuck into the painting. I've started working on a series of large canvases (95x 130 cm) dealing with the strive for utopia within modernist architecture and the notion of alienation. There are some photos of my latest work in the studio section.

I was in London looking at some exhibitions in November ad now we're going back there with the class on the 19th of this month to see From Russia as well as the Peter Doig Show in Tate Britain, should be fun.

Anyhow, I hope you enjoy the new look of the site, and check back often for new updates!

Now it's two weeks since I came back from Sweden and I had a really good time. I spent just over five days in Stockholm and during that time I did a lot of things. I had borrowed the College Hasselblad camera as I wanted to get good quality pictures of the different suburbs that I was going to visit. I went to a number of really diverse and interesting places and came out with about a hundred photos which I have now put up, re-arranged and filtered down on the studio wall. It felt somewhat sad to part from that amazing camera when I returned back to college.

I also bought some second hand items from different shops and visited a number of museums. I went to the Museum of Modern art, the museum of Architecture, the City museum and the National gallery, which had a really good exhibition by Swedish 18th century court painter Roslin, but all the places were really interesting to see. I also really enjoyed visiting family and friends in my hometown and I went to an exhibition in the County museum in Linkoping about Swedish design prince Sigvard Bernadotte which was also very good.

Now I'm in busy researching my thesis, which is about art and architecture, the notion of utopia and artists who are dealing with architecture in their work. I am also trying to get some structure to my studio work and after spending some time achieving smooth gesso surfaces I will soon start to do some painting. I've put up some new studio pictures in the studio section.

Now it's a good while since I updated this site, the whole summer has passed and I'm back in college again doing my honours degree. The degree show went well and a lot of people came to the opening. I only displayed one large painting (The process #2) as the third year students only get 2 metres of wall space each, as most of the space is saved for the fourth years. I sold some work and my family came over from Sweden to see the show as well.

I spent the summer working at the Galway Tourist Office as well as moving to an apartment together with my fiance so I didn't have much time to do art. I went on a trip to Doolin and walked along the Cliffs of Moher where I took a lot of B/W photos which I haven't got a chance to develop yet. I was also selected for this year's Claremorris Open Exhibition, a group show curated by Ingrid Swenson. Over 300 people applied and 32 were selected, including one guy from my class and 5 others who recently graduated from my college. We had a great time at the opening and the fact that I was one out of eight price winners who each received 1000 euro made it even better. I was thrilled to receive the price! Look at pictures from the exhibition in the studio section.

Now we've just started back in college again and I am continuing to work with art and architecture but this time I am going to Stockholm to do research about the building boom in the 60's and early 70's and take photos of interesting buildings in the suburbs as well as collecting retro items from the second hand shops. I am going there on the 30th of September and I'll also make time to visit my family and friends in county Ostergotland, so looking forward to it!

Only a couple of days left now, then we have to clear out our studios and transform the college into an exhibition space for the degree show. I am applying the finishing touches to a large painting based on the previous one I was making. It is depicting the process of documenting your work and has references to different art styles in it e.g modernism, pop art etc. I will soon put it up in the degree section of the site.

The weather has been fabulous the last few days with temperatures reaching 25 degrees, so I've spent some time outdoors as well. This week we all submitted our individual pages for the College degree show website as well as the exhibition catalogue. Everybody has been very busy lately, but I'm sure it'll all come together nicely. I have put up all my paintings apart from the last one in the degree show section if you want to have a look, and remember, the show will run between the 9th and the 17th of June.

It's been a couple of weeks since I last updated the site. I enjoyed the trip to Germany and we got to see a lot of different art exhibitions. I especially enjoyed the Pop art section in Museum Ludwig in Cologne and K21 (21st century art) in Dusseldorf.

When we came back it was time for the Easter assessments and I also stretched two large canvases, the same size as my previous one. I have decided that one is going to deal with the ways I've been processing my research, the items I've collected, methods used etc. and the other one is going to be about the subject matter itself, the Swedish apartment buildings from my hometown.

At one point these buildings were my main concern and subject matter, but as the weeks have gone by I have become more and more interested in the processes that I've used to deal with my subject matter. The scribbled ideas in my notebook, the retro items collected, the video piece etc. The painting that I'm working on at the moment and which you can have a look at in the studio section, doesn't even have the house itself present, only vaguely visible behind the studio flash in the background print. I am trying to document the process rather than the presumed outcome. I am really enjoying what I'm doing at the moment, I am mixing painting and screenprinting so the work is pretty time consuming but I feel that I have a lot of ideas so things are going well.

Last week was a busy one. I got hold of a roughly 160x120 cm stretcher and stretched a canvas over it and started working with mixing thin washes, a large acrylic transfer of my model apartment block and some other bits. It has been fun to work with but a lot of difficult decisions to make too. I want to make more large scale work after this. We tidied up in the studio last night as we have an external assessor looking at our work this week, and then we have regular assessments the week after next. I feel that I know what direction I'm going and that things have started coming together, but it's a lot of work! I'm looking forward to our trip to Cologne on Saturday, we'll be back early Wednesday morning. Unfortunately, only half of my classmates are able to go, but I'm sure it'll be fun! We'll look at some art galleries there, meet some artists and sample the german beer at night. Time really flies, it's not that many weeks left before the end of year show, but the real stress wont really kick in until after Easter. Anyways, added more studio pictures, so have a look!

We started our Degree projects just before Christmas, and I am working with architecture, different sources of artificial light and retro design. I was doing loads of research when I was in Sweden over Christmas. So far I've worked a bit with animation and I've put together a four min video callet "A futuristic retro film". There's a crap quality version streaming here on the site. For the video I built a scale model of one of the houses in an area of my hometown called Ekon, out of polystyrene. I am using footage from the video and the models to process my research and I am now starting to do painting from the models and film stills rather than the initial photos of the real houses. It is a lot of fun! I am also learning about the medium format Mamaiya camera at the moment to be able to work more with long exposure evening photography. I also added a new section to the site called "Degree project" where the video and some stills from it can be found.

We finished the docks project last week and displayed everything in the studio for our assessments, which took place last Tuesday - Thursday. Our Head Of Department, Michael Dempsey is the curator of an exhibition of some of our works downstairs in the college corridor, running this week. The opening is at six o' clock tonight. It's only small but it's still nice to show your work to the public. I am showing the two cityscapes that can be seen among the studio pictures in that section of the site. More photos will come soon.

Myself and my fiance were in London for a couple of days last week and we looked at a number of art exhibitons. I went to see Velaszques and David Hockney at the National Gallery, Laura Owens (absolutely brilliant) at the Camden arts centre, Hans Holbein and the Turner price nominees at Tate Britain and Carsten Holler's slides (they were so much fun going down!) and Fischli and Weisz at Tate modern as well as the galleries' permanent exhibitions so I don't think I've ever seen as many paintings in such a short period of time before, so it was great!

In two weeks time I'm going back to Sweden for Christmas and I'm also going to start cracking on my new project, which will focus on architecture and different buildings in Galway city.

We're still working on the same project and I've come to a few conclusions since my last entry. The area that I fist chose to concentrate on (the blue shed and the quay) didn't prove interesting enough, but I found the massive oil tanks nearby more interesting as well as some buildings by the river that runs past the tanks. We had a workshop where we rubbed off the ink of colour photocopies onto acrylic gel medium which I really liked and I've incorporated the technique into a couple of paintings on canvas stretched over board. I then painted over certain parts and added other bits of rubbings etc. Although I changed my subject matter somewhat I am using the colours that I researched for the shed area, such as the light blue emulsion that is the same as the one used for the shed itself. I am happy with the outcome so now I've taken on the task of making a full colour screen print of one of the photos on a large scale (5ft by 3ft 8in) and I must be completely mad given that I've not really done screen printing before, only seen other people doing it years ago, but the textiles and print departments' staff are really helpful.

My class has decided to have an exhibition downstairs in the college before Christmas and it'll be curated by our Head of department. I also have to write my thesis before the 23rd of this month so needless to say I'm quite busy at the moment. I'll put up photos of the pictures I've done since last as soon as I get a chance.

Time really flies, now we've already run into week four of our docklands project. It is going alright, I've started to get some structure on my research and figured out in what direction I'm heading. I've taken a number of photos so far and I'm concerned with the clash between different greys and bright colours. I've made colour samples and sketches as well as some experimenting with an over head projector and different types of paint. We've had workshops in gesso making and beeswax painting, which I've enjoyed and I've researched artists such as Michael Raedecker, Julian Opie, and Johannes Itten and his colour theories. I have bought graded cokin filters that I'm gonna use to create different effects in my photos and I took photos of the studio today so they're up in the pictures section. I think I'm getting there somehow...

College started again last week with a new project concentrating on the docks in Galway. I updated the website a bit today with a series of photos from my trip to the Aran islands in June (look in the projects section), as well as a new front page photo and a few photos from Sweden that I took when I was there two weeks ago. (look in the 'colour' section under scenery.

I had a great time in Sweden and the weather was brilliant, sort of like an indian summer with temperatures around 25 degrees C most days. It's not been quite as good here in Galway recently; rain and hurricane winds for several days, it'll take some time for me to adjust to it... I will bring up a section about our new project soon, so check back regularly.

Sorry about the long delay in updating the website. I don't have access to a computer during the summer holidays apart from an internet cafe in Westport and that's no good when I want to scan and upload pictures etc. So you'll have to bear with me until I get back to college, which will be around mid September.

I am working in the tourist office in Westport during the summer and I really like it. If there's anyone passing by Westport I'd be delighted to meet you. Myself and my fiance Sean went on a city break to Brussels in late May after college had finished and I've also been on the Aran Islands (off the Galway coast) for a few days in June. I did some drawing there and yesterday I completed a painting of an island scenery. (Pics will come later).

I've also booked my holidays to Sweden the first two weeks in September. It'll be nice to meet the family and my friends and relatives back in Motala, I haven't seen them since Christmas. Anyway, that's what I'm doing this summer.

I took pictures of the assessment display yesterday and today I went into town to get them developed. Now I have uploaded the photos relating to the 'Self project', so photos of the assessment display can be found in the 'studio' section and photos of the individual pieces can be found in the 'painting' section under 'projects'. I also uploaded a few more scenery photos, look in the 'colour' section.

Otherwise I'm kept busy I have to say, between emptying the studio, starting to pack the stuff in my room and finishing off my learning portfolio, which is due in tomorrow. But I uploaded the photos today as I don't know how soon I'll have access to a scanner again, as I don't own one myself and college is finishing up.

I'm in the computer room in the college while the tutors are assessing our work in the studios upstairs. I made a display downstairs on Friday that is part of my project. It includes the photos I enlarged, torn out pages from a book about neuropsychology, describing the human mind and its functions and two paintings. I'll take pictures of the display today so they'll be uploaded as soon as I've developed the film etc. sometimes it would be simple to own a digital camera...

Tomorrow we'll start clearing the studio spaces and I have to start packing up all the stuff in my room as well, as I'm moving out on Friday.

Got the site up and running last night. It's far from finished, but I hope that there's something here that will interest you as a visitor. I have put up pictures from my studio, at the moment we're preparing for our final assessments of the year, they're taking place on Monday and Tuesday. Today I was in Salthill and picked up my enlargements for the photo series Wonderland subsided that I will display downstairs in the college for the assessments. You can view the pictures in the "Photo" section under "Projects".

We have to move out of our studios by the 12th of May as the whole college will have to be cleaned and painted in preparation for the Graduate exhibition that will open on the 10th of June in the Cluain Mhuire campus, It'll be well worth a visit! Only a week left in Galway now and then I'll move back to Westport where I'll spend the summer. I've got a job sorted and if everything works out I'll manage a trip home to Sweden as well before we start again in September.