may
came home with a smooth round stone
as small
as a world and as large as alone.
For whatever
we lose (like a you or a me)
it's always
ourselves we find in the sea
e. e. cummings
In his poem maggie and milly and
molly and may, e. e. cummings captures a child's reflective
and spontaneous response to the seaside. Four little girls
wander along the shoreline and reveal the hidden truths
that lie behind everyday objects and events. Through their
eyes, pebbles and seashells are transformed into treasures.
These objects become familiar strangers that carry the
mind into unknown, magic worlds.
The sentiment of maggie and milly
and molly and may is echoed in the muted colours and
soft, blurry, organic forms of Mary Rose Binchy's imagery.
She too draws inspiration from lost moments in ordinary
life. Her Twenty : Twenty exhibition at
the Green on Red communicates an awareness of these moments.
Fragmented images of the everyday are grouped together
in sequences throughout the gallery. They are painted
in contrasting colours; vivid greens and umber browns
with coastal titles like Stone line and Shell
sequence.
Uniform in size, these abstract images
evoke the stillness of a lost and forgotten landscape.
A place of slate flecked sand with patches of sunlight,
where sheltered rock pools reflected the fragile quiver
of a grey-green sky.
Although Binchy's work addresses
lost and fleeting moments in time, her practice is sustained
by a sense of presence. This contrast is realised visually
using a mixture of delicate arching lines etched into
thick, deeply coloured oil paint. The density of paint
creates a physical presence in Binchy's work. Smudgy,
blurred and indefinable forms float like apparitions over
this surface, suggesting a sense of transience.
The act of 'looking, walking, being'
in the world is a central concern in Binchy's process.
It allows her to bear witness to the 'small secrets' of
ordinary life. When rendered visible, these overlooked
'secrets' invite the viewer to uncover a sensibility for
what is lost and what has been left behind. Lost time
is recovered in the transient traces of people and places
in our lives. Binchy's paintings reveal that loss isn't
an absence after all, but something palpable, tangible.
It is there amongst the pebbles and shells, at the edge
of the sea.
Ciara Healy is an artist and
writer based at Pallas Studios, Dublin.
Mary Rose Binchy: Twenty :
Twenty, Green on Red Gallery, Dublin, March /
April 2004
