Art in Gort

Shona MacGillivray

Shona MacGillivray- I have a small collection of paintings hanging in Gort Framing Studio for this Festive month . Many of these paintings are of birds. I observe and study birds as a way of connecting with our world, a world that doesn’t just revolve around humans. We have so much to learn from them yet, but we continue to destroy much of their natural habitats with climate change, intensive farming, pesticides and over fishing. I have a rocky inner faith that this destuction can be turned around, but not with out looking at the skies and listening to the birds.

This collection focuses on the birds of the cliffs, out at Moher and Hag’s Head in Co.Clare. The cliffs also represent the barriers and borders that humans and nature have to transcend.

The two large charcoal drawings are of the dark Fallow deer that enjoy the small apples from the trees in our garden. They wander in from the Drummin oak and hazel woods that surround us. We gave up a while ago on keeping them out, and now share most of the garden with them, including the veg in the raised beds.

On display are acrylic on canvas paintings, framed inks on wallpaper , large charcoal on paper, and reproduction prints ready to frame. I also have a willow and paper lantern sculpture of a Red Deer stag hanging in the window.

For enquires please visit the Gort Framing Studio, where you will also find , apart from the framing services, art materials, greeting and art cards, photographs by Andreas Edler and other local artists.

A Happy Solstice and Merry Christmas to our customers, and blog readers. .

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Aisling O’Leary

Aisling lives in County Galway ,she loves her work as a massage therapist and essence maker in the Resting Tree , Bothar Mor in Galway City. She is inspired by nature and cats. Colour and texture light up her world .

Aisling describes below what inspired her to create the paintings we are presently exhibiting.

Materials include natural dyes, screen paint, acrylics and tissue paper  . 

 

“At the start of this year, I was approached by the poet, Aoife Reilly. I was so inspired by all of Aoife's poems it took weeks to settle on which ones to paint. I choose ‘August Mullach Mor’ ,’Spring Medicine’ and ‘Hydrogen plus Oxygen’.

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After reading them over, I wanted to try and paint the poems. The imagery within the poems felt so naturally familiar: the words had such texture that it was like a creative blood transfusion into my days.

 

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In ‘Spring Medicine’, it was the words. The words bottle the enchanting scent of gorse enchantment in February; when you drink in and hang on to any colour you can find after the blank canvas of winter. It was the watery-ness of ‘Hydrogen plus Oxygen’ - words that explain the feelings of water like, “water laps like a lullaby, my water sears the air”. The crystal clarity and gentle compassion in this poem grabbed me. In “August Mullah Mor”, the poem sounded like a cry: one that awakens a birth right of ever person to be a witness to this amazing life force we have been given .

  Aisling O'Leary

  torytops@fastmail.fm

 

Here you will find three of Aoife Reilly’s poems .

  https://thegalwayreview.com/2015/06/02/aoife-reilly-three-poems/

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