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The Language of the Stones-Artist Residency Ireland





After spending time in the sacred sites of Loughcrew, and  Newgrange, I have been wondering about the meaning of the carvings on the stones.  Were they a language of some sort, telling about the purpose of the cairns, did they track the entrance of the sun into the chambers, were they simply a kind of decoration?  

When I came into my cottage here at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre, I found some words scratched onto a heart-shaped slate that a previous tenant had left behind.  Lovely that the word is Brave.  The word 'courage' comes from coeur, French for heart.  Be Brave.  What a wonderful motto to begin my residency here.  And now I'm in the final few days of the residency and so I'm looking at my work and hoping that I have been brave.


In response to the Be Brave carving, I found a Yeats quote about courage.  I did a small installation piece down by the lake, carving the quote onto some small slates that I found by the boathouse.  It reads: "Why should we honour those that die upon the field of battle?  A man may show as reckless a courage in entering into the abyss of himself".

Here are a few of the pieces I've created in Studio 2. 
 At home I use cold wax medium and oil paint, but for ease of transportation, I brought along acrylics and heavy body gel medium.  I brought 11x 14" multimedia artboard panels to paint on, giving myself the challenge of working in a new medium on a new medium!  The panels are made of paper that is coated with resin. They need no priming or sealing.   I normally work in a fairly large format at home and found the 11 x 14 " size a bit constraining.  So I made them into multi-panel pieces. 

I'm working with the idea of the language of the stones.










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  1. Judy WiseSeptember 26, 2011 at 11:27 AM

    These paintings are brilliant, Janice. You have captured the spirit of the place. I'm mesmerized.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Janice Mason SteevesSeptember 26, 2011 at 2:00 PM

    Thanks so much Judy. I very much appreciate your comments...such new work and I've not used acrylics before. I think that I'll carry on with this work when I get home only with oil and cold wax.

    ReplyDelete

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