I am now 50% complete working on the B&W roll of 5′ X 33-35′ paper. When I complete this second roll of paper I will have a diptych. I considered a triptych but talked myself out of it.
Brushwork with inks & gouache + drawing with water-soluble graphite pencils create different blacks and different whites in contrast.
I repeat & develop two images that begin the first blue roll of paper. The moon-ish figure and the dna figure (below) & seen above.
A fountain springs from ‘bird-human’s’ hand and at the same time is a swan’s neck.
Within the fountain or swan’s neck a series of images depict a beast ‘vomiting’ a seed which shoots into the earth (mound), takes root and rises.
The green bit of tape shows the 17′ mark. Animal shapes and double faces. A joker or fool. Figures in the mound. ‘Watery spray’ opening into what comes next…
Being 50% complete with this roll of paper equals being 50% through completing a triptych. The plan is for visual poetry on the third roll of paper. The challenge now, in completing the second roll of paper, is to move away from intricate detail.
The idea is to keep track of my hours (with the pen & the book) after each day’s effort.
I’ve organized (with high-tech paper clips) the rough sketches and ideas to complete the second roll of paper. I don’t know yet how I’ll use these ideas – deliberately composing or spontaneously expressing.
Previously in progress:
Beginning where I left off @ 25% with this face & beginning to elaborate.
Ceremonial crown inspired by the European deer-god idea Cernunnos. Antlers look branch-like as well.
So far in January I have used the pen & the book to keep track of the hours I put into my current B&W work – on a long roll of Fabriano mid-weight paper.
3rd section
Working on the floor like an iguana I am almost 1/3rd through the roll of paper working with black & white gouache, B&W ink, water-soluble graphite pencils, and drawing pens.
4th section almost complete
At first I thought this might be Boudicea, Queen of the Icenis. I considered developing a metaphor based on her famed history & Celtic roots. Then I started thinking ‘more of a shapeshifter than Boudicea.’ My main impetus is not to illustrate an idea or theme but to watch images (in relationship) develop organically and interpret the meaning. Some images are planned and some are spontaneous.
Detail 4th sectionDetail 3rd sectionThe pen and the book to keep track of the plan. Writing hours worked after they are done.
I will shift into a different ‘feeling’ of depiction soon. Around the 1/3rd mark.
1st section2nd section – my phone camera is disappointing.
This work will mirror (in part) & dovetail with my previous subject matter on the ‘long blue roll’ of Fabriano mid-weight paper (same height and length).
S. McCabe, Druidica Blue: Deja Vu (Cave Art of the New Psyche) 2022, 5’H X 35’LDetail 2nd sectionDetail 2nd section
So it seems I will have a two-part work on two rolls of paper.
Detail 2nd section
Now it seems the plan is for the work to become a diptych. I think this fits the criteria for a diptych.
Detail between sections 1 & 2
My goal is to reintroduce images from the ‘original’ (first) ‘mostly blues’ roll of paper into the B&W (second) roll of paper and develop the themes manifesting my investigations over the last few years.
S. McCabe, Druidica Blue: Deja Vu (Cave Art of the New Psyche) 2022, 5’H X 35’LDetail
My plan will take a few months longer as I complete part two of this two-part work (a mere 2/3rds of the current roll of paper to complete).
Detail
Info about the overall project:
In 2022 I completed a long painting/drawing on Italian mid-weight paper titled ‘Druidica Blue: Deja Vu (Cave Art of the New Psyche).‘
Yes, it seems I have interrupted doing my ‘to do’ list of what must be done. Yes, it seems I have started working on a new roll of Italian mid-weight paper using B&W media: both inks and gouache.
Fish-woman? Wise-woman? Shaman? Doesn’t feel like fibre-optics.
This new B&W work takes me full circle, in a way, to when I was a young, self-taught, beginning artist working with a 01 fine-tip, refillable, Rapidograph pen. I laboured over intricate, intuitive work, often overnight – stippling and scratching away at the tiniest details – dark and surreal, somewhat psychedelic. I have expanded on how I work with B&W since (of course – one does expand). As the Grateful Dead sang, What a long strange trip it’s been…I sold offset prints of my ink drawings door to door to students in university residences and the infamous Rochdale College in Toronto. I still remember encounters from those long-ago days and still have many of those drawings.
That may be Boudica in among natural forms and abstracted Celtic motifs.
It requires a bit of finesse to juggle ink & gouache side by side. You integrate two mediums, in one image, hoping the unique properties of each medium stand out. Each approaches the other: from here or there, keeping its own edge, and relationship with water.
A physician ‘nurses’ an anvil with a baby bottle – a deliberately absurd image.
Although I began (Whoosh!) without any plan, this work immediately communicated a specific theme. Two themes actually, I will play them off against each other, intertwining them. One is a ‘reverse metaphor’ of sorts – highlighting an impossiblity.
A wee seahorse appears in gouache.
And the other depicts a figure in mythical folklore (who existed historically). I will abridge her mission, into my overall theme of juxtaposing polarities within a dense, intricate ‘jungle of the psyche.’ I will reassign her, respectfully… Once again the ancient juxtaposes against the ‘now.’
I was surprised by the sense of ‘portent’ in the composition.
I have not corrected these iphone8 photos, taken under less than ideal conditions. I started to ‘adjust’ them in Photoshop and decided it was too time-consuming. Below we see an example of ‘drawing’ beside ‘painting.’
A ‘star’ within the breast of the bird breathing ‘fire.’
Just like with my ‘long blue painting’ I am working on the floor.
Green tape (not very sticky) helped me divide sections for photography.I must remember to get those soft knee-pads for gardening to help with working on the floor.
Often in my poemimage postings I post the first draft of a poem and spend days editing the material. However, what I am saying here is pretty much just ‘black and white’ facts (excuse the pun).
Face to face with a bird breathing fire…Abstracted face with emotion…I imagine a sound to go with this…I may have ‘adjusted’ or ‘corrected’ this image in Photoshop.
With ink I am both drawing and using a looser, painterly style, with wash, dripping, splattering, and expressiveness, which can be rather unforgiving. The gouache, although paint itself, is used more deliberately, adding depth, and solving problems.
A linocut moon from my ‘wordless poem’ Nevermore Together (2014, The Porcupine Quill’s press – 120 linocut prints). A Spiral Monk digital drawing from a series I did a few years ago. The Irish terminology discovered in the John Moriarty book Dreamtime.
Eachtra: An adventure to or from the Otherworld of mythic, or of near-mythic, strangeness. Imbas Forusnai: Method of divination practiced by seer-poets of ancient Ireland.
I spent ten months, mostly working in silence, creating this painting (& drawing) on a long roll of inviting, warm paper and felt how it used me as a channel. While writing the artist statement (below) I encompassed multiple perspectives concerning the work, probably with a focus on how and why. This material is from a pdf I assembled to promote the work.
As this mystery in blue appears beneath my fingertips my planning designs go up in smoke. The hypnopompic stage of waking illumines the space behind my forehead with images and textures. I begin working sessions with these. Or I simply wake after three hours sleep and begin where I stopped.
I name the painting Druidica. Then Druidica Blue. Then Druidica Blue: Deja Vu. And finally Druidica Blue: Deja Vu (Cave Art for the New Psyche).
In this landscape of the psyche I unearth longing: A quest for the unknown where I imagine belonging. Dripping, staining & flicking the brush I depict shadows cascading across the cave wall. I tumble influences: Prehistory tumbles into the Celtic tumbling into the Medieval tumbling into Modernism of the early 20th Century. I situate myself in art history addressing postmodern amnesia. I re-imagine now.
My journey to this point begins with a shattered ankle. Following surgery I draw page after page of two-dimensional spirals morphing into three-dimensional forms. I investigate spiral symbolism and discover a prehistoric language chiseled into stone. I discover: Newgrange on the River Boyne; Rudolf Steiner’s mystic-trance history of Hibernia (ancient Ireland); Three Cauldrons of Poesy transcribed in the Middle Ages, reportedly of Druidic origin now in Trinity College, Dublin; Joseph Beuys with healing language performing Three Pots for the Poorhouse inside an abandoned Edinburgh poorhouse; Sinead O’Connor singing her incisively poignant Famine. It occurs to me this painting joins the 21st Century to an older type of consciousness.
I begin the 35′ (width) X 5′ (height) painting by dividing sections to be completed one by one. After establishing a pattern I lose control and frame the spontaneous narrative in a more nebulous manner. The painting is flowing the same yet not the same. Perhaps mirroring the work of the psyche. One enters at any chosen spot engaging re-imagined folklore, symbolism, magic and iconography. I work using the blues of art history: Giotto, El Greco, Chagall and Picasso leave their calling card. I kneel to blot standing suddenly writing the poetic phrases I hear, arriving from an unknown place.
Out of some great forgetfulness came this blue sandstorm. In remembering the ancestral I multiply shades of blue. I hear chanting in the echoes.
I relate the process of this artwork to projects I have previously created. In creating cinematic poetry videos I worked (with the editor) to compose performers & surroundings in tandem, in motion, defining the wide screen. The one hundred and twenty B&W linocuts I carve and print for my ‘wordless poem’ Never More Together jangle in unison, though pages apart, connected like cars in a train. I exhibit three Moleskin accordion sketchbooks twenty-one feet in length. On a white wall intricate ink drawings unfold across pages revealing thematic and kinetic relationships. A later series of paintings on canvas makes me wish for the emotional & receptive texture of paper.
I read a magical quest poem, The Song of Wandering Aengus by William Butler Yeats. I rewind videos of the River Glyde in County Louth. I follow ancestral footprints down to the river, set sail for the new world and arrive (as Irish Wonder Tales often begin) A long time ago…I sponge Prussian blue, cerulean blue & ultramarine blue into a receptive & emotional texture until the sea-sponge runs dry. I infuse the blues of art history with a dream of the ancestors. I work a thin brush with round-tipped hairs – texturing the Gaelic mermaid wearing a halo who rises in time outside of time, holding a seashell, vibrating the monumental and mythic. Steeped in lore.
Mirrored images create a jazzy yet alchemical rhythm. I play with the Celtic propensity for seeing in doubles. In visible and not-so-visible relationships. An oracular raven divining portents – a Celtic warrier wounded by an arrow to the heart – a figure aiming a divining rod into the blueness & a herald sounding the (Irish war-horn) carnyx – in nearby spaces one discovers their mirrored doubles. Birds navigate the oracular weightlessness of air.
Energies flash between life forms at the molecular and heroic level. Also in my painting you evidently can get milk from a stone. The dolmen’s udder nourishes the Druid. Metaphorical mysteries nourish the audience. The molecular and heroic awaken the unknown. The painting addresses postmodern amnesia with signs, sigils, and symbols.
I read of who Taliesin might have been and then The Salmon of Knowledge. Water-soluble graphite releases a quivery chiaroscuro of premonition. I paint and draw both freely and controlled, both somber and subversively zany. Ancestors dye their skin blue with plant ink. I rinse my hands.
I squeeze tube after tube of Windsor & Newton white gouache dry. I work with gouache, inks, watercolours (in tubes, pan & pencil), aquapasto medium, graphite crayons & pencils, archival drawing pens, some acrylic, some candle wax. I discover baby food jars of blue & white pigment from a long-ago egg tempera painting class.
A channel forges its way into me causing me to dream this dream. I discover the roll of paper is longer than expected. I continue kneeling. It is finished. After ten months I am exhausted. I have translated my longing.
I envision this work, framed & illumined, welcoming an audience. For inquiries visit here & scroll down to my email.
@ The Redwood Theatre, Toronto. Like unscrolling the forest one lives in, seeing it for the first time.
I don’t know if I mentioned instinctive & expressive brushwork building the composition.
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