Old Churches of Dublin

It seems like there is a church around every corner.  (OK, not every corner, but if there isn't a church on the corner there is at least a steeple or two within view.)  The ones that are the most noticeable are old and Gothic.  I've already mentioned our friendly neighborhood church, Aughrim Street Parish.

The back of Aughrim Street Parish

Another favorite is St Audoen's church.  We first saw it as we were finding our way home on the first Sunday we were here.  We "took a detour" on the way home when we either got on the wrong bus or missed our stop.  In the front garden there are outdoor musical instruments that the kids had a good time with.  I love that it is old and austere and still very much a functioning parish church.  It was erected in 1172 but has gone through periods of decay and rebuilding through the years.  In its heyday it was the heart of a wealthy parish and well connected to the guilds.

St Audoen's

The area labeled as St Anne's Chapel is now a little museum that talks about the history of the building and life at the time it was built.  My Boy's favorite object there was the trepanning tool.  Yikes!  

My favorite was the 15th century monument to Sir Roland FitzEustace in the base of the bell tower, what a great name for a Medieval nobelman.  There is an inscription on the front that says "Pray for the soul of Roland FitzEustace of Portlester who dedicated this place or chapel in honor of the Blessed Virgin Mary, also for the soul of Margaret, his wife, and for the souls of the faithful departed." (in Latin)  He was quite the guy who nearly started a civil war when he refused to give up his post as Lord High Treasurer of Ireland.

St. Audoen's is also the home of a lucky Celtic grave stone.  It is said to have a supernatural protector because in spite of being removed from its home several times, it always finds its way back.  The ghosts of the priests of St Audoen are said to protect it today.  In the 14th century it was placed near a cistern that was Dublin's first civic water supply.  Merchants would make a daily trip to rub the stone for luck.  Even today people will come and touch the stone for luck.

 "Happy" children touching the lucky stone

Relief on the wall of St Anne's chapel

One of the most famous churches in Dublin is Christ Church Cathedral.  The kids and I stopped by one morning for a little sketching and John and I went back later for the full tour.  There are days the kids are a bit tired of churches and museums and just want a day off from all of the touring, so we let them stay home with the TV and their devices and everyone is happy.

The morning we went out sketching turned out to be a beautiful sunny day.  We enjoyed taking time to sit and enjoy the scenery without rushing past.  There were plenty of tourists there that day walking by.  We became part of the show.  It was fun to listen to the tour guides as they told their stories and watch people watch us.  I tackled the top of the tower.  My Girl took on the door and curly iron work.  Quite successful for our first attempt at Urban Sketching.  I hope to do a lot more.

 It is all very Gothic now.  Like most things it didn't start out that way.  Like many structures that old there is a long history of building, decay and rebuilding.  Much of what you see today is Victorian era rebuilding.  I particularly liked the stained glass, the tile floors, and the crypt.  I also really liked the iron work on the doors and the oldest reliefs built into the walls.  Many were memorials from later time periods, but a few looked much older.

 Door to the stairs down to the crypt (and the crypt gift shop)

I also liked the tomb of Strongbow who led the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland.  I later learned that he isn't actually buried here and the tomb is a 1570 replacement since the original was destroyed or damaged when the nave of the church collapsed in 1562.  It is unclear who the small figure it.  It could represent his son who died as a child.

 Reputed tomb of Strongbow an Anglo-Norman nobleman.

These churches are along a frequent bus route.  The grey stone church is St Peters church at the corner of Cabra road and North Circular road.  The red brick building used to be a church, but is now a solicitors office.  I love the contrast between the two.  I wish I knew the history of the little red church.  I took these photos from the top of the double decker bus so they are a bit hurried and the light post is a bit in the way.

In our wanderings we also came across what is informally called the Black Church.  It is called the black church because the stone appears black when wet, that would be a lot of the time here in Dublin.  It no longer serves as a church, but had some interesting architecture and a rather sinister legend associated with it.  (Sorry no picture.)  The legend says that if you run around the church three times at midnight you will summon the devil.  Austin Clarke, a Dublin poet and author, wrote an autobiography in 1962 called Twice Around the Black Church.  What an evocative title.

So many churches, so little time.  We haven't even made it to St. Patrick's yet.

Hello Dublin!

The first step on our adventure is Dublin.  We have been so focused on moving to Italy and getting ready for life there that I had almost overlooked the fact that we have three weeks in Dublin and Ireland.  It is a great place to recover from jet lag and get used to a more European way of living.

After a long overnight flight that included a race through Toronto airport, our flight from SFO to Toronto was a couple of hours late, we arrived in Dublin on time.  I was worried that we would miss our connection which would have made for a rough start.  We are staying in an apartment in the neighborhood of Stoneybatter.

According to the stone down the road, "Stoneybatter once formed part of the ancient second century rode from Royal Tara to Glendalough, crossing the river at the ford of the Hurdles.  The name in Irish, meaning the road of the stones, has over time become Anglicized to present day Stoneybatter."  Now it is a little hipster neighborhood with shops and old brick row houses.  The majority of the houses appear to be Victorian.  The church around the corner, Aughrim Street Parish, was built in 1876.  It is quite lovely, but lovely neighborhood churches from that time are a dime a dozen in the city.

View from our front door

It is certainly a mix of the old and new.  Our apartment building is modern, but the row houses behind are old.  I can easily imagine it as an urban Victorian slum. There are small row houses with boot scrapers built into the walls near the doors.  A couple of streets up the houses are a bit bigger and set back off the street.  Farther up the houses are more separate and have space between them.  We ran across a boy leading a horse down a side street.  There is a carriage tour business nearby.  He was charming and a bit of old Ireland.  Clarke's City Arms pub just up the street is also delightfully old with it's hanging baskets and bright blue front.  There used to be a hotel on the spot with the same name and before that an estate owned by the Jameson whiskey family.  The hipster shops in Stoneybatter, the tech businesses, and our favorite fish and chip shop, run by Italian immigrants, definitely new Ireland.

On our first evening in town we took a walk to Pheonix Park.  It seems to be the Central Park of the city.  My Girl was thrilled to find a playground when we first arrived.  We played for a bit, then wandered around.

We found a large monument that we later learned is the Wellington Testimonial, a monument to the Duke of Wellington.  My Girl called it the Irish-ton monument since it is an obelisk like the Washington monument.  Among many other things the Anglo-Irish Duke became a hero during the Napoleonic wars and is famous for leading the victory of the British at the battle of Waterloo.  He was later the Prime Minister of the UK on two different occasions.

 On the plane I asked the kids what they were most excited about seeing or doing in Ireland.  Their answer, real Kinder eggs.  So we did, choking hazard toys and all.

More later...

Update:
John found a blog post on the history of our neighborhood.  (Follow the link for historical pictures)  Until the 1970s there was a very large cattle market on the corner of Prussia street and North Circular Road.  Cattle would be sold and run through the streets to nearby slaughterhouses or to the river where they were put on boats.  It is clear that the homes there are newer.  They have garages.  Cattle buyers and agents would stay at the City Arms hotel just up the street from our apartment.  The building is still there, but it is no longer a hotel.  The Clark's City Arms pub is still there.  The hotel is mentioned as the place the character Leopold Bloom lives for a time while working at the cattle market in James Joyce's Ulysses.

Where?... Why?...

Lately I've been answering two questions a lot, Where? and Why?, mostly relating to our plans for the future.  The conversations often go like this...

       Will ... be attending ... school this fall?
       We are moving out of town so we will be attending a different school.
       Moving?  Where are you going?
       We are moving to Italy.
       Italy.  Wow. 

The expressions vary from enthusiastic, to confused, to envious, to why on earth would you ever want to do that.  The most unique response was, "Well, I can't top that."  I wasn't asking her to.  I think she was surprised that we were doing such an unusual thing.  I don't come across as a particularly interesting or exotic person.  We drive very old cars, we don't take fabulous vacations, my clothes are basic to say the least.  She doesn't know me well.  The truth is we are exactly the type of people who would do this type of thing. 

We have both worked and/or lived overseas and value the experience you gain when you see more of the world in an in depth way.  We are and have been willing to give up some things so that we can have this experience for our family.  Vacation travel is good and fun, but living in a place is a very different experience.  You get to know the place and people well and appreciate the similarities and differences between your old home and your new home.  Your world gets larger.

       Is is for your husband's work?
       No.
       Why are you going?

After several of these conversations I needed a reasonable answer.  The real reason is that we want to and we can, so we are going.  John lived in Rome as a boy for 3 years when his parents got an overseas assignment.  The family had previously lived in France where John was born.  These overseas experiences were transformative and really brought the family together.

I've thought about our friends who have come to our area from other countries for job opportunities, typically in tech companies.  This is the center of the tech world that draws people from around the globe, but we don't work in tech.  We can go.

I tell people that we are going for the adventure.  John really feels that our suburban California life has gotten a little stale.  He wants to go back to the chaos of the European capital he loved as a teenager.  I didn't have the same feeling.  The kids are a little older and things are going well with the family, work, hobbies, art, school etc.  If anything I was enjoying the lack of chaos I felt when the kids were small.  But, perhaps I say that because I knew we had this big adventure coming soon.

We chose this year to go because both of the kids are changing schools.  My Girl is going into middle school and My Boy is starting high school.  We thought that it might be easier to make a big change when there was a smaller change already happening.  I am quite excited about the schools they will be attending.  I think they will thrive there.  I hope.  But more on that at a later time.

       How do you do it?

Well, it has taken a lot of planning and really informed a lot of our life choices for years.  We have taken our jobs and careers in directions where we could make this happen.  I now teach primarily online classes.  In Italy I will work for the same community college and continue teaching online.  I've also applied for an additional online teaching job that will hopefully come through. John has his own accounting business that he has been growing and managing to get it to a place where he can be gone for part of the year.  He will have to come back to California for the spring and fall tax seasons, so we'll have to see how that goes.  That will mean some long separations, but Facetime makes it a little better.

Another key part is that John is an Irish citizen, thanks to his grandmother who was born in Ireland.  Because he is an EU citizen he, and his family, can live in an EU country with very little trouble.  I say that now as we continue to work through the formalities.  Hopefully it will come through OK.

       How long are you staying?

I don't know, two to seven years.  In two years we will have had a real living experience.  In seven years my girl graduates from high school.  I don't see a need to stay longer than that.  That is a big range.  There are a lot of things that will influence how long we stay.  The big one is how well our jobs work with us overseas.  For me it is pretty easy, but I am giving up the option for on-campus classes to fill in the schedule.  For John working more remotely is an unknown thing.  We don't know for sure how well it will work.  There could be family or personal things that come up that call us home.  There could be global things such as dramatic changes in the exchange rates that make it difficult for us to stay.  There are a lot of unknowns, but the future anywhere is unknown, so we go forward anyway.

Because of our new adventures I am going to revive this blog.  There are friends and family who may want to follow along so here we go...

Waiting for the train

This is one that I did last year and never got around to posting.  It is a half sheet (15" x 22").  It is really all about the value changes and the light coming through.  I think it is an early morning on some European train platform.  I did this one after doing the cow pictures and you can see the similarities.  There is something about this color palette that I like and keep coming back to.

Beyond... part 3 (my favorites)

This is the last bunch and they are my favorites.  I'm not sure what happened in my head, but there isn't any way that I could have predicted that this is where I would be at this point.  If you look at the first painting you don't really see the connection, but looking at the series I think you can see how I got here.  Painting in series like this is really a different experience.  It really does push you to go beyond the obvious answers when you don't have to rethink the subject each time.  For this last set the shape design was somewhat similar.  My brain was tired of trying to come up with new shapes.  So I kept the shapes more or less and redid other parts.

#15

On this one I love the swoopy blue ribbony things.  It feels free.  And there must be something I like about the blue/gold/brown color combination because I keep coming back to it.  I think it works here.  I wasn't thinking of this while I was working on it, but now, looking back, there is something about this painting that makes me think of a giraffe.  Maybe it's the irregular rectangles I taped off.  Maybe it's the black/blue tongue.  Maybe I needed more sleep.  Who knows.

#16

Another favorite.  I love how this evolved.  I wanted to try my 3" ugly brush again and see if I could make it work.  When I used it last time, the black ink was too dark for the rest of the painting.  I knew I needed some other dark to balance it out.  I also tried to mix black and brown ink to soften it a bit.  That didn't work.  It still looked deep black.  But when I washed some clear water over to do some wet in wet the brown ink bled.  The black is waterproof, but the brown isn't.  What is really cool is that it didn't bleed brown.  It was like liquid paper chromatography separating out the pigments in the brown.  It was oranges and pinks.  I was surprised and really like it so I went with it.  I love how it turned out.  In the dark center portion I wanted something rich and deep.  I think of it as a starless night sky with a bit of Northern lights.  The darker on dark shapes give it more dimension. 

#17 - stone

As I was trying to figure out what to do next I came across a post from an art blog about a painting by John Singer Sargent. (here)  The painting was of a family crest carved in stone.  I especially liked his advice to "flatten the lights and open the shadows".  I tried to do that here.  I think you really get the effect of the dimensional stone.  It feels peaceful and strong at the same time.

#18 - fire

In class we had taken way too long discussion luminosity and how to create it in our paintings.  The teacher boiled it down to this, surround pure hue with greyed colors of similar value.  I tried it and I like what happened.  This painting makes me think of a glass blowing furnace with the white hot glass and the surrounding metal furnace.  I wanted to show delicate perforations in the "metal" like what you see in the stone screens in Moorish architecture.  Overall I think this is pretty cool looking, like something that belongs on the cover of a science fiction novel.

#19

For the last two paintings I was running out of ideas so I thought about what types of surfaces I like to paint, old wood and metal.  I also saw a picture on Pinterest of blue Japanese pottery.  It was beautiful so I added that in as well.  I love how the textures in this painting worked.  This painting is fairly light and bright.  The second one a bit moodier.

#20

This last one is the same basic idea as the one before, but a bit different in feel.  My favorite part of this is the way the rusty rings came out.  The color is layered and so rich in real life.  This is one that I might actually frame and hang.  The problem is that I'm about out of wall space.

This class has been so fun.  It made me dream of being a "real artist", painting and showing and selling my work.  I even had an offer to buy some paintings at the end of class show.  Nothing came of it.  I was willing, but not eager to sell, so I gave a high price and the potential buyer backed out.  For as much as I dream about being an artist, there are always trade offs.  Once the class finished and the show was over all of the other things I need to do came rushing in.  There may be a time when I can put more into painting and art, but I don't think it is now.  But I keep doing what I can and I may take this class again next year if I can work it in.

Beyond... part 2

The content of the class isn't about painting techniques, applying the paint to the paper.  It is all about design, how to use the elements of design to create the characteristics of a good painting.  The seven elements of design we discussed are:

• line
• size
• shape
• direction
• color 
• value
• texture

We spent most of the time, three weeks each, on value and color.  The last week, texture, we talked about actual painting technique, but that was the last day of class.

You manipulate these elements to create:

• unity
• harmony
• dominance
• conflict
• repetition
• variation
• gradation
• balance

It sounds simple enough.  Not so easy in reality.  Probably the most valuable part of the class was the critique session at the end.  Each week we would bring in our 2-3 paintings for critique.  It was really great to get the feedback on my own paintings as well as see what the others were doing and how they were progressing.  I can see why people take this class multiple times.  For one class member this was her 17th time through the course.  She could have taught it herself at this point.

#10

I was tired of the dull browns and blues I had been working with so I wanted to use mostly intense, pure colors and let the natural value of the different hues do the value work.  I wanted to stay away from the human form of the wood carving so I cropped it and focused on the swooping lines of the bottom.  This image doesn't really do justice to the intensity of the color.  It is pretty bold.

#11 - red rock by firelight

Here I simplified the shapes even further.  The inspiration for this was a red rock arch uplit by a campfire at night.  I used a flat brush and a stencil both positively and negatively to apply and lift paint to get the texture in the "stone" areas.  I used resist to make the little swirly stars.  This is one of my favorites.  Probably because it reminds me of a landscape I like so much.

#12 - ice

Class members went on and on about how hard it is to use Pthalo blue and Pthalo green paint.  So I decided to do a painting with primarily these two pigments.  Here the inspiration went from desert stone to icebergs.  The composition is a little weak with the darks spread out the way they are.  It needs to be more cohesive and lead the eye around the painting in a better way, but I like the color and texture.  I definitely get the icy feel.

#13 - primary

I wanted to move further away from the objects themselves.  I really like the textures I created here and the strong value pattern.  I usually work wet in very wet.  This can lead to a rather soft mushy look so I wanted to do something completely different.  I worked much dryer and left the individul brush strokes.  You can still see the original objects if you look for them, but it isn't obvious at all.

#14 - surreal

You can see the lines of the wood carving in here, but they have taken on a completely different form.  The head became a cracked moon, and the body a keyhole to the sky where the object became the negative space.  The empty rim of the drum holds them together.  The blocks and metronome are still there.  The arrangement of those objects could be better, but it's not bad.  

The thing I like best about this painting is the textures I was able to create.  The pigments I mixed for the grey of the planet separated back out on the paper leaving a pretty interesting effect.  You can see the cad red that floated to the surface.  On the outer rims I was going for a sort of old metal look.  I'm not sure if it looks like metal, but I like it.

This class was so much fun.  I really enjoyed the work.  There were other things in life that didn't get done, but I'll catch up later.

One more set still to come...

Beyond the Obvious Paintings

In January I decided to take a painting workshop.  It was a bit of a last minute decision, but I had heard good things about the class and knew I wanted to take it at some point.  There was a rumor that this might be the last year, so I jumped in.  I am teaching classes online this year so I had a bit more time that in the past.  (I spent a LOT of time Fall quarter getting everything set up so that I could take it back later in the year.)

The class is taught by Mike Bailey, a nationally recognized watercolor artist who lives in the area.  This workshop is a bit different than the others.  The typical format is to have 3-4 full days of classes where you work in class.  This class is once a week for 10 weeks.  We do all of the painting outside of class.  It is intense, twenty full size (22" x 30") paintings in 10 weeks.  The last day of class was a show where the community was invited and each student showed all 20 of their paintings.  So, 20 paintings in 10 weeks.  And they all had to be derived from the same still life.  The first one was supposed to be realistic, the obvious, and then you just keep going.

 #1 - realistic

This is the first still life.  The main piece is a wood carving I bought in Ecuador years ago.  I also included a cardboard box, a block of wood, a metronome, and a hand drum.  You can see the face and rim of the drum, but not the wooden rim.  I played around with the set up and lighting a bit.  I wanted to get the shadow in an interesting spot.

#2 - line

During the first class we talked a lot about line.  So for this variation I reduced the elements to lines.  It sort of works.

#3

The feedback I got from the first two was that I needed to fill the page.  So I did.  I also started abstracting the shapes and changing the surface colors and textures.

#4

The wooden figure is still there, but now it is metal in varying degrees of wear, from shiny smooth on the head to rough and oxidized toward the bottom.  The circle of the drum is still there, but it is no longer a drum.  Same with the rectangles of the box and block.  I really like the variations in the skies.  Day, night, and cloudy late afternoon.

#5

For this one I wanted to get away from the figure and change it a bit.  I used a chopped bristle brush in India ink to make what I hoped to be rather calligraphic lines.  I really like the geometric background of this one.  The blue, gold, and brown are a rich combination.

#6

This one was difficult and is my least favorite.  I struggled and it shows.

#7

At first I did this one with just the black line work.  I wanted to build on what I had done before and make the line work a little bit more free.  I liked it.  It looked very spare and reminded me of a sumi drawing.  I was tempted to leave it like that, but at critique the teacher said the it was a nice drawing, but not a painting.  So I took it back and added the color.  It has grown on me.  For awhile I was afraid I had ruined a beautifully simple drawing.  It is interesting, but a little reminiscent of the Bat signal.

#8

This one is OK.  I was trying to work on the sumi drawing idea, but it didn't work out as well as I had hoped.  The composition is just OK and the black ink is too dark to relate to the other colors.  Not a favorite, but a step forward? backward? sideways?  Anyway, it's a step.

#9

I felt like I was going in the wrong direction so I wanted to completely change the look and feel of my paintings.  I also wanted to get rid of the figure.  Even though I love that carved wood figure, the human form dominates the composition too much.  Here there are shapes and the edges of the shapes echo some of the lines in the objects in the original still life, but it is much more about the relationship of the shapes, colors, and values themselves.  I like this one better.

More to come...