Diary of a Journey

Personal images from residency at Cill Rialaig

Images made and of Cill Rialaig

It’s a year since I added anything to this blog. It’s not that I haven’t been working although I’ve certainly been through a fallow patch where it’s a real struggle to produce anything that excites me or that I can believe in.

Since my visit to Cill Rialaig I have been working on some of my paintings and prints in PhotoShop. The results have been really pleasing, in that the images appear to come alive and have some depth.

I still enjoy getting down and dirty with traditional media but i feel the direction my work is taking me is a mix of traditional and digital media.

Work can be made more accessible through publishing sites like Blurb.com.

Trying to understand what the difference is between an image that is alive and one that is dead. Looking at some of my prints, there are some that are alive, they have a voice and a life of their own. There are others that appear to be dead and have no voice. I can’t see what the difference is between the two except one looks dead and the other looks alive.

Started reading The Master and his Emissary – the divided brain and the wester world by Iain McGilchrist.

He argues that the two hemispheres of the brain have not merely different skills,but have very different perspectives on the world. He sees the differences lying not, as has been supposed, in the What – which skills each hemisphere possesses – but in the how, the way in which each uses them, and to what end. McGilchrist draws on a vast body of recent brain reasearch and illustrates his thesis with fascinating case studies.

He suggests that the left hemisphere is designed to exploit the world effectively, but is narrow in focus and favours theory rather than experience. It rejects living things in preference for mechanisms ignoring whatever is not explicit, despite evidence to the contrary is absolutely certain of itself and lacks empathy. In contrast the right hemisphere has a broader and much more subtle understanding of the world but lacks the certainty to counter assertions of the left hemisphere.

The metaphor of the master and the emassary in the title of the book is based on the understanding that the relationship between the hemisphere is not symetrical. The left hemisphere, though unaware of its dependence, could be thought of as an ’emissary’ of the right hemisphere, valuable for taking on a role that it – the ‘Master’ – cannot itself afford to undertake. However it turns out that the emissary has his own will, and secretly believes himself to be superior to the Master. And he has the means to betray him. What he doesn’t realise is that in doing so he will also betray himself.

Most of my recent images have been put together digitaly using images made in “natural” media. It’s a great way to work collaboratively as none of the original work is destroyed. Although the digital prints do live they lack the texture and depth of an etching or woodcut. There is a also temptation to build in too many layers of information into an image and it becomes technical, clever and dead. The old rules of simple is best and less is more need to be strctly applied to ensure digital images sing and be more than just an exercise in cleverness. Nobody likes a smart ass.