www.communityvoice.ie - Art news from Dublin 15

Travelling the Silk Road

Like most things, you can blame it on the kids.

If Margaret Farrell’s toddler daughter had not wandered into her studio and sought to transfer some of the paint from a still wet oil painting onto her hands and dungarees, then Margaret might not have reconsidered the medium in which she had been working. And if she had not taken a course in silk painting in Marlay Park as a result of this episode, then she might not have become the highly sought after silk artist that she is today. “Inspirations from Nature 3” by Margaret Farrell runs at Cabra Library until May 29th.

“I fell in love immediately with the silk,” says the Navan Road mother of two. “I love the rich vibrancy of the colours and the flow of the dye. And recently I have been experimenting with different textures using gel pens, crayons and even feathers! The response has been quite fantastic and the doors are starting to open for me now!”

Wax resist techniques for embellishing silk can be traced back to India in the second century A.D. and to Java 200 years later where the batik industry flourished. Margaret however takes great inspiration from the Irish countryside for her paintings. “I have a great love of the outdoors and I draw on this as a source for my art. I love the wild, rugged landscapes and the changing clouds. I find I can draw inspiration from a piece of weathered bark or pebbles on the shore or waves crashing against the rocks.
“When I am not painting, life feels ordinary and humdrum. When I am immersed in painting, I feel like I am lit from within like a stained glass window in sunlight. I feel alive and vibrant. Everywhere I look I get inspiration and see images that I want to capture.”

Originally from Phibsboro, Margaret has been living in the Navan Road area since the age of ten and works in St. Mary’s school for Deaf Girls, where she teaches silk painting and sound perception through music. Although she admits to having had very little formal art education, she says that she has been drawing ever since she could hold a pencil, although it was only in her twenties that she started to experiment with paints and colours.

Her first solo exhibition of silks took place in Blanchardstown Library in 2002, although she had previously participated in Castleknock Christmas Fair the year before. For the past four years she has mainly worked with silk, with her work finding its way into the ESB collection and also private collections in England, America and Australia.

Her current exhibition at Cabra Library, though, features a mix of between 35 and 40 silk paintings and watercolours. “There is a tendency – not necessarily correct in my view – to regard silk painting as a craft rather than art,” explains Margaret, “ and so I have decided to learn watercolour, as I want to be recognised as a serious artist. I feel that working in watercolours has helped my proficiency as a silk artist, giving me more control over the dye, and also that painting on silk has given me the confidence to experiment more with watercolour.”

Certainly, the paintings in her last exhibition sold very well and very quickly and those in her current exhibition are likely to do the same. Now might well be a good time to acquire a Margaret Farrell before the prices soar out of the range of the ordinary pocket.

“Inspirations from Nature 3” by Margaret Farrell runs at Cabra Library until May 29th.

Admission is free during library opening hours.

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