Some notes on "Hoodies"
"My exposure to the landscape round Sligo has led to some quite radical changes in my work. The hooded figures that have appeared recently in my work are 'hoodies' - a catch all term for young people. I am interested in the idea of the hoodie looking similar to the 'Wayfarer' in the work of Caspar David Friedrich and to representations of saints, visionaries, monks and mystics in western art from the renaissance onwards. The idea that the marginalized figure might be someone searching for something underpins the use of this iconography. The hoodie figures have been placed in landscape settings, transposing them from their expected urban environment into the traditional realm of the visionary romantic poet or solitary monk.
The landscape of the Northwest of Ireland with its strong relationship with a later romanticism provides a politicized backdrop for the figures. The disjunction between the figure and setting is about a collision of cultures; urban vs. rural, contemporary vs. traditional. Ireland is currently confronting many issues that come from these collisions. The United Kingdom has relapsed into a kind of colonial interventionism unseen since the first half of the 20th century and the days of the empire. My work reflects on the two countries histories and current socio-political climate as well as my own experiences and history.
The work is about the idea of dislocation, of being somewhere one should not. This is in part is a kind of exploration of a postcolonial guilt. It is also about the idea of and role of the artist within society in the past and today. How many artists hearts that they would like to have lived a couple of centuries ago, when the idea of the visionary genius loner was taking shape? "
'Hoodie', collograph and monotype
50x60 cm