This exhibition is the culmination of long conversations  and shared creative periods with Galway artist and friend Hilary Morley

We are both drawn to the sea. We both live by the sea and the sea is a dominant and recurring feature in our practice.

Hilary’s work in this exhibition celebrates the community of sea-swimmers around Galway and divers from the Blackrock diving platform at Salthill near Galway. She celebrates the inclusive nature of sea recreation using intricate collage of hand-painted papers and recycled print.

Romance versus Reality: I have always placed myself within the Romantic Landscape tradition: a form of  escapism in the past, from the stresses of my ‘other life’ working in an inner city education environment, supporting children, young people with a variety of challenges and their families as they navigate the education, health and social services systems.

My art work, therefore, was always a deliberate effort to distant myself from that life. It was an intimate yet robust dialogue with the environment, always focused on the patterns and rhythms within Nature yet always underpinned by drawing.

Having left the education world long behind me, concentrating solely on my practice, I found that the inner eco-warrior of my youth was slowly re-emerging and I could no longer indulge in the ‘fantasy’ of our shoreline, but needed to describe the reality of our seas and shores.

I have become obsessed with the wrack line – the tide line of seaweed, flotsam and jetsam left behind as the sea recedes. It is now universal that tangled within the wrack is a copious quantity of plastics and human debris. Toxic jewels that shine out amongst the drying seaplant-life until the next tide sweeps in and sweeps it away to be replaced by another array of human plastic detritus.

This could have resulted in angry marks and finger-wagging challenging images, but I also wanted to capture that curious ability we have to look out of the corner of our eyes and still see the beauty of our coast, albeit littered with our thoughtlessness. So I have made careful pencil drawings and soft paintings of the wrackline, with flashes of colour that we choose to ignore. Collages integrate found items from actual seaweed to plastics along with the more familiar torn papers and card, to create patterned images of the shore. The layering of wrackline on the shore meeting sea which meets the sky.

The chastisement is subtle and integral to the overall aesthetic of each piece.

Hilary and I hope that the counterbalance with her pieces, expressing such an active and joyous relationship with the sea will be thought-provoking and raise a smile and a heavy sigh.

We shall see what we shall see, as they say.

‘Tarraingt na Farraige: the Pull of the sea’:

Two person collaborative exhibition with Galway Artist, Hilary Morley

Working Artist Studios, Ballydehob. 28th June – 20th July

Tuesday - Saturday 1-4pm, Closed Sunday & Monday

Main Street, Ballydehob, West Cork P81 H771 +353 (0)86 162 8471