The Troubles Series
As a young artist growing up “The Troubles” in Northern Ireland were a big influence on my identity and on the identity of the people around me. Naturally as an artist you are looking subjects that inspire and influence you. Subjects that you feel are interesting to work on, but also that you have something worthwhile to say about them. The Troubles was very much that for me. The backdrop of the Troubles was a big part of my formative years and was naturally ingrained into my own personal history. When I began to create artwork about it, it felt organic and aligned.
I didn’t live through the worst parts of the troubles during the 60s, 70's & early 80's. I was born in the late 80s, at a time when a lot of the worst fighting had dies down. There was stability and relative peace - but it existed on very unsteady ground- threatening to inflame at any point. The nature of this type of conflict, is that it doesn’t end definitely or all of a sudden. It is protracted and drawn out, as the people on opposing sides, live together in close quarters and need to collectively agree on peace. Nobody wins a conflict like this, it must be settled collaboratively, with all sides settling on a compromise.
The influence of living in an area hugely impacted by conflict is always present. How people behave, the things that you learn, the way you grow up , the sensibilities you adopt. The history of conflict is never too far away and is always influencing who you are - regardless if you are aware of it or not.
The influence of a conflict is latent within everyone who grew up there. Where I grew up it was a conflict born of identity - about which religious side you come from, what your beliefs are, what political side you are on, which side of the border you come from, which side of the city you come from, which football team do you support - they are all markers of identity, all of these things indicate where loyalties lie and whether you were an enemy or a friend.
Latent vs Active
It is an interesting dynamic to grow up with and without doubt very influential in later years when i began to create art. One of the main characteristics of the Troubles in my mind is Identity, and it is identity that i most directly explore in my work. You can choose to ignore it or recognise it, it doesn’t matter - the influence of conflict will persist. Many of my peers myself included grew up very apolitical & non religious, rejecting the main aspects that drove the conflict. We don’t identify with those elements strongly, but it still influences.There is a latent influence, a kind of underlying force inherent in your identity.
A few very dramatic events standout as major influences in my life. - one in particular that was very formative in my early years was the Omagh Bomb
August 15, 1998, in which a bomb concealed in a car exploded, killing 29 people and injuring more than 200 others. The Omagh bombing, carried out by members of the Real Irish Republican Army. Nine children (5 girls and 4 boys; including an 18 month-old baby), Three young boys from my home town, aged 8, 11 and 12 years, were killed in the explosion. I wont go into the terrible details of the event itself, you can find more on that here.
In August 1998 i was 10 years old. The children killed were my age, from my town who had travelled on a school tour. The vigil procession that occurred a few days after the bomb is one of the few early memories that i can clearly recall, like it is indelibly imprinted in my memory. 1000’s of people carried candles at night down the street where two of the boys lived.
With art there are influences you are drawn towards and seem to demand exploration. As a subject matter The Troubles is that for me. In a way it is cathartic, you are exploring your own psyche mentality and the the formation of your identity. Ultimately you are learning about yourself and representing it on canvas. That is the origin of the troubles work.
Rose Tinted Glasses Effect
To describe my experience, it was most often looking back retrospectively on events that happened in the past, but at times dramatically punctuated by an intense live event (Omagh) That was the approach that i felt could be paralleled in my work.
It is an approach of retrospective, looking back on things that have happened in the past and how they are perceived now. A lot of the things that i used to hear and pick up as a child contained a certain mood of romanticism. That the years in conflict contained a kind of truth or honesty. That their integrity about having that just fight or a cause to rally behind. A kind of purpose. A lot of those events were terrible events, bombings, shootings, fighting, people being killed - these were almost romanticised as time went on, looked back upon differently than how they were experienced at the time. That nature of looking back in hindsight/retrospectively with a different visual field/lens. I call it the Rose Tinted Glasses Effect - looking back on things they are a lot rosier or romantic that they actually were in reality. It is a form of nostalgia, misconstruing the past.
Aesthetic
I liked the idea of taking the old events, factual based events - and representing them in the present somehow. I would ask “How will this be romanticised, how will we look back on this and see it as something different, something rich and nostalgic”. Visually, what is that aesthetic?
I experimented a lot with just layering modern images colourful images on black and white factual newspaper photos. This created an interesting dynamic of the black and white mixed with something new, colourful and modern. I assessed them visually and look for where new interesting overlaps occur that can lead to establishing a new, modern image that played on the Rose Tinted Glasses Effect.
I structure many digital layers, building up a composite with the factual B&W image as the base. On top there are layers of different modern images of colour and shape to achieve the Rose Tinted Glasses Effect.
After digital composite process, i move to canvas and working with oils complete the piece. The style of painting I am known for relies on dynamic painting, with loaded decisive strokes. Capturing a lot of the interesting digital material with the analog medium was another technical layer that adds a lot of depth to the finished pieces.
Progression from Troubles
The basis of the troubles series from a technical perspective was the act of trying to modernise old, factual B&W images. This was a direct play on the Rose Tinted Glasses effect, and conceptually lead the way i approached creating the work. The crossover in my work began there.
The nature of what i was doing digitally at the time became very interesting to me. Taking these often B&W images and manipulating them digitally, compiling and experimenting with digital means to achieve an interesting aesthetic outcome was the framework that would influence later work like D-humans.
Another aspect was allowing a certain amount of control to be relinquished to the machine. This was very interesting to me because that felt like a parallel with what was happening in the real world. The crossover of analog and digital, humans and online. It also felt like where the most interesting innovation in painting was going to come from. That the digital realm was going to be the most likely place where we would be able to achieve new ways of seeing with painting, and that was becoming a core driver of why i was motivated to create art.
In a way so much of our identity is now represented or experienced digitally. We are becoming this Analog vs Digital crossover as humans. This directly lead to the Dhumans series. Core to my practice as an artist has always been elements of identity. In some ways the identity of myself as an artist, what I am motivated to create is one aspect - but largely the identity of humans as a collective - where are we going in a broader sense, what is our identity becoming.
My work has always been about identity. With the Troubles series, it was very much a local, personal identity I was exploring. whereas Dhumans Anon and others is a collective identity, future facing - and looking to where we are going - exploring what we will become.
It makes for compelling subject matter as an artist and has rich opportunity to innovate within the Boundaries of Painting.