Old Market Art House

I stopped in at the Old Market Art House in town yesterday, mostly for an assignment for another class, and got swept up in the art of the town. The gallery itself is cute, small, and quiet. I found myself in awe of the paintings of places I'd recognized and been. Even now, when I look up Dungarvan on Google Maps, I recognize all of the pictures that pop up. It's so strange to think that a place like this could so quickly be familiar and still unknown. 

I do not know the place in this painting below, but it was a dreamy representation of what Dungarvan might look like a few years ago. The sharp edges of the oil paint stood out to me like the strata of color in the Cliffs of Moher, and I'm beginning to see a continuity and connection between all things. 

Like, for example, when Gianna and I stopped to watch dolphins this morning, I realized that the colors within the water are suspended and mixing. The water I was experiencing was not just Atlantic Ocean water, but also all the water that has touched and intermixed over time, from the Pacific, Antarctic, and other smaller streams. It's a kind of experience that I do not have words for, but an experience much like Mary Oliver's realizations in her poetry. 

This connection, found in the fine lines of the artwork, becomes a paradox itself. Because the lines are what create the boundaries, sections, and moments apart from other colors. The fine lines add style and texture that set this painting apart from the others as my favorite. 

These thoughts got me to muse on Irish art as a whole, and to notice how lots of their artwork center on the politics, place, and connected themes of Ireland. There is not one place the writers knew better than their own, even from afar like Joyce and Yeats. As I reread sections of Ulysses, I'm brought into a sharper understanding of place and references because I've been to some of the streets in Dublin, know about the authors he references, and have learned a little bit more of the history his characters grapple with. 

I can't speak for all Irish artists, authors, poets, and creatives, but it makes me so happy to see that they all create for some purpose. It's amazing to step into an artist's work in process, or one moment of their career, and see how differently their path winds in the next work. I read a short collection of Yeats' poems, and a bit of the Celtic Twilight before taking this class. But, going through the poems in the Irish landscape, with all of the history and context waiting to be discovered, I find these poems so much more invigorating.