Category: Photography

Lenticel #1

For this weeks kick about on Red’s Kingdom I resurrected a previous series for the painting Tannenwald by Gustav Klimt. I’ve always been fascinated by the detailed scratchings of birch trees, like little beady eyes amongst the white trunks. Back home in Ireland, down a picturesque route swarmed by sleepy sheep, there is a gorgeous forest of sitka spruces and birch trees. My neighbours don’t bat an eyelash when I hop over the fence with my camera in hand. I took a bunch of these photos at different times of the year and made an impressionistic mixed media series a while ago called Lenticels, where I painted over the photos, mimicking the same textures to encapsulate my impressions of this magical place. I loved this series and happened to take more photos this past winter and made a few more to add to the series for this week’s Klimt prompt.

Still Life

This week’s Kick About on Red’s Kingdom is an excerpt from part two of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. I thought about doing an illustration of a grand hall worthy of a queen, pooling with rim light, but I really wanted to do something physical and with my hands, mainly to crack into the little art studio I have revamped so that I don’t turn my bedroom into a catastrophe of shite while doing Kick-Abouts late into the night like this, so some still life photography it is then! Something about the grandiosity of the poem, the spectacle of the conceitedness, signified a sense of danger and something uglier underneath. With these photos, I wanted to tell a story – they may look aesthetic and familiar, but things are not as they seem – much like those in power, littered with gold and jewels, but who are usually the most corrupt imposters of all, and wear their porcelain masks to hide behind a facade. I took and borrowed elements of my own and my roommates, including my jewellery, my favourite wine glass I accidentally smashed and plucked out of the garbage, silk pillowcases, lots of fruit, and trimmings of plants I nicked on my neighbourhood runs.”

Freezing Fog #2

This recent cold snap reminded me of these photographs I had yet to share taken in Ireland this past Christmas. The sun was setting and the fog was rolling in from the ether, causing my camera to struggle to focus on anything in particular, softening the gaze as if the clouds fell that day.

Plastic Forest #1

This weeks Kick About over on Red’s Kingdom is the perplexing art of Christo & Jeanne- Cluade. I wanted to make a miniature version of Christo & Jeanne- Cluade’s impressive uncanny installation art, but attempt to make it look larger as if I had the resources to produce something of that scale. So I did some deadheading of branches and flora around my garden, wrapped clingfilm around them and stuck the encapsulated snipings into styrofoam to keep them steady as I photographed the results. I loved how in certain shots of Christo & Claude’s pieces the sun shone through – it reminds me of poppy seed pods or Chinese lanterns. As I was taking photos, in spurts the sun broke through the clouds of the dreary sky and lit the tombs of these plants in spots and lines, another treat was after a slight sprinkling of rain, which made me focus more on the intrinsics of the composition rather than its initial scale”   

Freezing Fog #1

Although a dumping of snow or ice is yet to grace the landscapes of Ireland, I was treated to another phenomenon – freezing fog. I’ve never experienced fog like it – completely enveloping all the eye could see in a matter of minutes, swirling around the fields and transforming objects and buildings into milky soft nothingness, as my camera struggled to capture anything in detail it felt as though I was living in an oil painting.