Breaking Through

Breaking Through
Acrylic on linen-covered board
330 mm x 310 mm (12.5" x 12")
Price : Euro 100 unframed

Hello again. I've just spent two weeks at an artist's residency at Cill Rialaig, the restored famine village at Ballinskelligs in Co Kerry, followed by two weeks based in Courtmachsherry in Co Cork while I interviewed the 12 artists as 2007's quota of artist profiles for the 'Cork Now' magazine. It was a great month! The only thing I missed was the one day of snow here at home!! The weather for the first week at Cill Rialaig was exciting to say the least - it was the week of those incredible storms in Europe and we watched the sea with wonder ... huge waves, boiling cauldrons of water in the bays and harbours and foot-high piles of jelly-wobbling foam on the beach ... stunning!

The days flew by and I did manage to finish a couple of horse paintings, battle (and lose the battle) with some landscapes, and successfully complete a small abstract or two. I'm going to keep the images of most of my paintings this year under wraps as the best thing about the artists residency was the time and head-space I had to begin to sculpt my personal philosophy on why I paint how I do. The upshot of that is that I'm going to keep a fairly low profile this year exhibition-wise and build up a body of work in the two or three collections I'm drawn to experiment with.

The painting featured with this blog is apt in that the title describes how I feel at the moment - 'Breaking Through'. It's an abstract influenced by the sea I lived with at the foot of the cliffs where the famine village sits - although it reflects one of the sunny days and not the stormy days. It's not yet up on www.lyndacookson.com and may not make it there for most of the year while the rest of the collection is developed.

'Til next time ...
Lynda