Carissa Farrell visits the studio of sculptor Catherine Greene where the magic of transforming abstract idea into plastic form takes place.
There is a vigour in the sculptural practice of Catherine Greene that contradicts common assumptions about figurative sculpture. It is a hardy resistance to monumentalism. For Greene this resistance functions like a compass, guiding her through her intuition towards strategic modesty that foregrounds the integrity of the art object and audience against the artist’s ego. As Greene says herself, ‘it becomes egotistical to say that I will make an iconic work…’ But an artist can only sustain such a measured approach by having a core vision that anchors it. Vision is the Holy Grail for an artist, it is felt and very much part of an artist’s personality – it is in the kernel of an idea and a sense that an outcome is possible, it is about making and unmaking, it is about failure as much as it is about success. I spent some time with Greene in her studio where she described her ideas as though they exist around her like an aura – they are hers and deeply felt but she must search for them as though they are intimate possessions that have been temporarily mislaid. But as with all artists the moment arrives where she can pull them into herself, transform them and make that leap to innovation, the final emergence, the forming, shaping and imagining which is very much under her conscious domain.
As Europe confronts its current refugee crisis, Kathryn Milligan looks back to 1916 when a Belgian artist was one of the 2,300 Belgian refugees who sought shelter in Ireland.
Peter Murray reflects on the cool Nordic aesthetic of Patricia Burns whose work is on view in January at the Taylor Galleries, Dublin.
Recent excavations at Rathfarnham Castle have brought the former inhabitants into focus, prompting Simon Loftus to recall some vivid episodes from the family’s history.