Autumn 2004- Why paint? A vox pop
CIRCA: Painting used to form an important part of your practice, but it no longer does. What do you feel motivated this change? Painting had become for me a limited form of expression. I loved painting but its history and associations would inevitably lead me to a cul de sac. At the same time I became fascinated with the challenge of using the moving image, sound and photography in fine-art practice. In the twenty-first century, lens-based media is our daily bread. It feeds, sustains and mediates our constantly evolving systems of information, perception and values. Its use in my work became an inevitable progression. There is also a sculptural element or installation process, which allows further creative possibilities. Some day I may find a way to paint again. For now it is subsumed inside a lens-based practice.  | | Mary Kelly: Work in progress: Asylum , medium-format photograph; courtesy the artist | At college I fell into painting by accident following a more successful introductory block in painting than in sculpture. I ended up doing my degree in painting. Although I felt terrorised by the 'painting debate', I was adamant that I was a painter. I was very disciplined, the works 'had' to be made from the generic materials of painting; canvas, paint, glue size. I was an expert in my own Hammerite, masking tape and squeegee techniques. As my work became increasingly three-dimensional and installative I began to introduce other materials – theatrical curtains, a disembowelled fur fabric rabbit. From there it was a short hop to video installation.  | | Susan MacWilliam: Headbox , 2004, video still; courtesy the artist | Susan MacWilliam Painting as a context of historical linear progression, which attaches value to a created object (the painting), is in my view beside the point. It aids in the persistence of the myth of the artist as an infallible ego creating mythological objects, which through this process gain a dubious value. This scenario is acted out and reinforced across the cultural sector. The real action for me is in the cultural political debate this situation creates, for example: Where is the art object? How much does the cultural context in Ireland affect the idea of the art object? And then logically: Why use a single contextual identity to create art?  | | Sarah Iremonger: Windows – Stolzenhein 1, no. 374-47 , digital video still, 2003; courtesy the artist | Sarah Iremonger Early on in the life of the Orchard Gallery I made a decision to invest in my role in the Gallery over my role as an artist. Though I was exhibiting, and beginning to sell work at the time, making curatorial decisions about the work of other artists while projecting my own painting didn't feel right. The decision was also a reaction to the idea of a studio based practice and that sort of separation from the world, combined with a sense that the Orchard Gallery, if worked at, could actually mean something in its context. So I didn't pursue painting as a practice from then on. It was a conscious decision based on my emerging sense that art's value could lie in its relationship with something 'larger' than itself. In the background also was the desire never to slide from serious, 'professional' attempts at communication into a recreational, aesthetic cul de sac of self expression. Declan McGonagle
CIRCA: Painting used to form the most important aspect of your practice, but now other media or forms of output have joined painting. What do you feel motivated this change? I make watercolours for fun nowadays but my motivation to expand away from painting was to locate the work within wider frames of reference. The interesting questions for me involve how to articulate a relationship to the spaces around us. In particular ways painting does this, but to me (making sweeping statements) it often now seems over conventionalised and its discourse narrow, pretentious or stooged by commercial interest. With a concern for spatial engagement and movement, the need to involve a physical aspect seems crucial – rocks, whilst great to look at and paint, get much more interesting when you grapple with them.  | | Dan Shipsides: Faroe Crag (biggest sea cliffs in Europe) ; courtesy the artist | Dan Shipsides Now that the background drone of anti-painting rhetoric has generally subsided and certain career agendas have been at least partially satisfied, we can look at the activity of painting in a clearer light. It can be seen simply as one of many options available within a climate of diversity. Hierarchical claims for the supremacy of painting have certainly disappeared, to be replaced by the nonhierarchical and putatively more democratic notion of 'interdisciplinarity'. In other words, we are supposedly on a level playing field and anything goes. However, this is not really anything new. Contrary to the prescriptions of late modernist dogma, artists have always diversified. The difference now is that the connective space between mediums, traditional or nontraditional, can be emphasised, rather than the mediums themselves.  | | Micky Donnelly: Notes from a garden shed No. 29 , 2003, mixed media on paper, 76 x 56 cm; courtesy the artist | Personally, I prefer a bit of separation. Painting is my main interest but I also write. My first novel generated some critical interest, my second is well on the way to completion, and I've started a third. I see writing as something of an intellectual investment, the same way I see gardening as a physical investment, a discipline I made time for in order to reap the benefits at a later stage. Strangely enough, all these activities immediately complemented each other in oblique ways. This was a not wholly unexpected benefit. Micky Donnelly CIRCA: Many find painting controversial, primarliy for two reasons: its 'historical embeddedness" and its dependence on the gallery space. Painting is central to your practice. What would you say makes you choose the paint? Painting is very alive for me, particularly because of its historical embeddedness. When I engage with a subject that has a historical resonance for me, I run a route of conversation through centuries rich with different voices and concerns. If I have done a morning's monotyping I can clearly see opened up for me the explanation for so much of the raw handling in Degas' work. Suddenly, so many paintings of his that previously might not have been as interesting to me come to life. I come up with far more theories on the hows and whys by physically engaging with painting than by maintaining a cerebral distance. Margaret Corcoran I was always interested in materials and colour. As a child I loved the strange green rubberiness of Stretch-Monster and the juicy colours of Hubba-Bubba bubble gum. Later in life, during a stay in Vietnam, I saw colour anew. Deep red flower petals, saturated with sunlight, became the colour of love and I started to imagine colour as both a living thing and suggestive of lived experience. With time spent in the studio I realised that a lot of what I was doing was remembering. This language of memory and instance became a language of colour, light and touch. I became interested then in exploring the language of painting as a form of life.  | | Cian Donnelly: Slice painting in Mr. Freeze blue , 2004, oil paint, 30 x 15 x 15 cm; courtesy the artist | Cian Donnelly I paint mainly because I find it a satisfying way of creating and resolving ideas about how I see the world. I am a painter in the traditional sense of the word although I am not averse to using other media; it just depends on what I am working on. I don't think painting is problematic; historically it was culturally dominant but it has become just another visual option. In a digital age characterised by image saturation, it is generally probably the slowest way to make an image; this is for me one of the most interesting aspects of painting.  | | Diana Copperwhite: Retro girl , 2003, oil on linen, 40 x 40 cm; courtesy the artist | Diana Copperwhite
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