October coming to an end

This weekend has gone by very quickly. All day Friday was spent at a symposium in Galway, with a little window of library induction half-way through. It's nice to feel like I now have official access to NUI Galway's library resources. I have a feeling many future weekends will be spent up there.

Saturday was a long-overdue and much welcomed day of pure relaxation. Our house made the decision to take a mental break for the first time in weeks (on my part, anyway) and watch movies, eat, and go out for dinner and drinks. It was so nice. There was a Halloween disco going on at Logues, and we enjoyed seeing everyone's costumes. Sunday was a more typical weekend day of reading and studio time, although the winterage festival provided some interesting morning entertainment. There was a great live-art performance by some of my classmates that's very difficult to describe on here. It involved bubble-wrap and a trail of colored paper leading from the church to the town hall.

Something interesting that happened over the weekend is that the cow-field next door has been transformed overnight into a Turlough (see link for wikepedia information). The photos I have of it are of the first day of its appearance. The lake has expanded even more since. So, we now have a completely new view out the side windows. It's fantastic to see the sun glinting off the ripples of this new lake, with the stair-stepped mountain in the distance. Just beautiful.

I stopped to watch some sheep graze on my walk home

Friday in Galway 

A corner of my room

Pumpkins for sale at the Farmers' Market!

Halloween disco, bubble-wrap dress.

My losing raffle ticket

Disco

Turlough day 1 (keep in mind, the evening before this photo was taken, this was a regular cow field, without a single visible puddle of water).

This week

Midterm critique was this Tuesday and it was a much better experience than I was anticipating. The suggestions were helpful and inspiring and left me with an intense desire to spend the rest of the week neck-deep in oil paint, blasting the Pogues and drinking whiskey from a jam jar. (All of these things I consider symptoms of a positive emotional state).
Friday is my birthday, and I've been reflecting all week on how different my life is this October than the October of last year, and the year before that, and just how rapidly and dramatically it has been changing for the better. I feel very lucky and blessed to be celebrating my 24th year while pursuing an MFA in Ireland (and have high hopes of spending many more birthdays on this side of the Atlantic).

Back in B-vaughan

I'm back home from an incredible four-day trip to London. I didn't want to leave, but, as I've been telling everyone, am equally glad to be back in the painting world of Ballyvaughan. It's nice to have somewhere so beautiful and inspiring to call "home". There's really no way I could adequately describe all of the moments that made this trip so phenomenal, inspiring, exhausting, inspiring, breathtaking, sensory-overloaded, inspiring, mentally stimulating, and of coarse, inspiring, but hopefully the iphone photos I took can be pieced together to form some kind of overall, coherent London tone. Here we go:

Monday morning

This weekend has been crazy. Because of an upcoming (leaving tomorrow!) trip to London, I've been in the studio almost nonstop trying to create a decent, half-way presentable body of work for midterm critiques. Because of this, I have very little to update and few photos to post. A few of us were walking home from the studio yesterday evening for a fantastic "family dinner" of french toast (with maple syrup!), quiche, and fried potatoes. It was glorious, and much needed. I haven't been that full in weeks.
On the walk home we noticed that the quality of light was exceptionally beautiful, and that the cows were unusually close, so I attempted to take a few photos with my iphone. These are the results.

London tomorrow!

"In rain or sun we loved this country; its haunting impersonal bareness, its austerity, aloofness, small lakes, the disproportionate bulking of the mountains, smells of shrivelled seaweed rotting in grey dirt-spume, brine, storm-wood, tarred rope and riggings, sea-wrack, and mud after an ebb tide...
Bare, boulder-strewn land backed by purplish heather and misty mountains. The people lived close to the soil, pushing back the soft bog and making it give food; a barren, troubled existence. Yet this country grips their body and soul; it haunts the imagination in its cruelty, strength and beauty, and the bleak coast with its wild angry sea, changing skies, crashed rocks, as if old gods had sported with pieces of granite mountain, can be recalled when sleek fat land is forgotten. There is a hunger for the soil, an elemental feeling that even a stranger or foreigner can sense."

-excerpt from "On Another Man's Wound", by Ernie O'Malley.

I don't think I've ever read a better description of this fascinating, sad, and hauntingly beautiful country as the one he gave.

There's very little to update concerning my personal life. I've been spending most of my time painting, reading, sketching and walking. Today I made a fantastic batch of carrot soup. Tomorrow Logues's Lodge is giving step-dancing lessons. I'm looking forward to that. Haha.