CODA

As I near the end of a three months residency with Art Arcadia, I feel I now have some time to reflect on what I’ve been up to. The residency came at a really good time, after a break from making any art. I’ve felt a strong desire to get back into a studio and just concentrate on creating an entirely new body of work. If you’d asked me a year ago what I was going to do I wouldn’t have been able to answer, my mind has been blank and incapable of doing anything other than getting on with the business of being sort of present in this world, that, and a bit of gardening in my allotment.

Fortunately, I did start to have a few ideas and, although the work only vaguely resembles what I had in mind, it has grown and developed and taken on its own momentum. All the things I’ve been experiencing over the last few years, through the lockdown, experiencing massive grief, and watching more horror unfold on the news every day, it has all been absorbed into this new body of work. I don’t think it’s an entirely bleak outlook, if anything, I think the work is an expression of love. I found myself wanting to draw for the first time in years and I’ve really enjoyed working on a series of small portraits of children. Each drawing has felt like an opportunity to focus and meditate on a small individual person. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to use a sound work by my son Rónán McFeely. Using his music has made it feel very much a collaboration, without his input this work wouldn’t exist.

Doing this residency has catapulted me back into thinking creatively again. St Augustine’s schoolhouse has been a wonderful space to work in. ‘CODA’ is a work in progress, I hope I get the opportunity to build on it, because it’s not finished.