‘I love this landscape, I really do, and it’s worth celebrating’

ARTIST Michelle Boyle’s new exhibition exploring Lough Ramor opens

To say that Lough Ramor and its surrounding landscape informs Michelle Boyle’s new exhibition would be an understatement - its waters were actually used in the creation of the beautiful collection of paintings. Just over a dozen watercolours are interspersed with a similar number of larger oil compositions of the display in the Ramor Theatre titled ‘Freshwater’.

While the renowned artist is no stranger to plein air painting, she feels this body of work goes beyond that description of simply painting outdoors.

“This was different,” Michelle, says explaining she created a mini portable studio to allow her work on site. “I was going at all times of the day, very early in the morning, late at night.

“They were all painted on site, sometimes in a canoe, sometimes on the side of the lake.”

The results in the watercolours are very busy, bordering on riotous, surprisingly colourful, alternating between confused and considered, intricate yet at times blurry, energetic and a word Michelle uses, chaotic. Her watercolour style is all her own - you could pick it out anywhere without straining to read a signature at the bottom right hand corner. Little wonder she was awarded the Watercolour Society of Ireland Annual Award and President’s Cup in 2020.

She likens her mark making using a Chinese calligraphy brush more to “drawing with paint” after prolonged observation.

“You do start seeing shapes in the movement of the water when you are looking at it,” she says as we take in a work titled ‘My Secret River 2020’. “That’s painted over a few hours, so you are spending time sitting.

“Watercolours are hard, so you are trying to paint with less.”

The ‘less’ is reflected in generous shapes where the white paper remains unadorned, creating contrasts that helps accentuate the greens, blues, purples and yellows.

“A watercolour above any other medium, I think, it totally reflects the person.

“If you want a sort of perfection you’ll work hard and can get it in watercolour. People who know me, know I’m quite easy going, I believe in a certain amount of chaos in your life. I think my painting is similar, emotive.”

She adds of ‘My Secret River’: “That’s painted with water from the river - all these are painted with river water, lake water, rain water.

“The rain started falling on that painting,” she says noting where purple bruise rocks bleed into the river below. And Michelle embraces that element of happenstance.

“I suppose that’s the difference in my head between what plein air means and what being immersed, or almost like a performance art in the landscape where I feel you are working with nature, and what’s around you. That’s what the watercolours allow me to do.”

There’s a poetry in taking the very water she intends to paint as her subject and using it to dilute her watercolours, only for it to then evaporate and leave the work.

“The fact that there’s rain water and water from the Blackwater River, and from Deerpark River, that made all of these paintings for me the landscape is in the paintings.

“I feel that it is probably one of the most beautiful of mediums, and the fact that it’s water based I just love because it is so expressive.”

The oil colours are executed on a larger scale and were painted back in her home studio at the former Garryross Old School on the western side of Lough Ramor. She doesn’t work from photos in interpreting what she’s experienced while painting the watercolours out in the landscape. Working in the two mediums is symbiotic for Michelle. We are beside ‘Night Swim’ the first oil painting you will see when entering the atrium on the ground floor of the newly renovated Ramor. The rest of the works are on the first floor.

She offers that “some people are saying they are slightly more abstract”, which suggests she’s not convinced.

“I have no visual reference, it’s from my feelings - I paint what it’s like to be in the water at night.

“The lights in the distance are the floodlights from Ramor football pitch - they are probably having late night training.

“You just remember things and put them together so it’s more about structure and the feelings that go into it.”

One factor in why Michelle interrogated the landscape in her locality was Covid, and its restrictions. Michelle made good use of this curious time, and by staying put she has created a series of works that are not only exhibited here, but also in Los Angeles with Hambly and Hambly Gallery and also in Mumbai.

“I think there’s something really interesting about a painting of Lough Ramor hanging in Los Angeles, and a painting of Mullagh Lake hanging in Mumbai. That gives me great joy.”

Identity and belonging have been central subjects in Michelle’s previous works, and the Celt observes that by remaining at home her work has also resolved into exploring the themes of belonging.

“Work should always move on. That earlier work was very much about identity, I’d moved place I was searching for my own inheritance, and that was reconciled in the work - I had two or three exhibitions.

“This is still biography, it is still about where I am. Some of these were painted after I dropped my son to school - these are my neighbours this is the view outside my window - this was when I was in the canoe, so it’s still very much biography,” she asserts.

“I think under Covid a lot of us asked of those questions: Where are we? Where are we happy?

“This is where I live, this is where I am, I’ve been living here a long time. I love this landscape I really do, and it’s worth celebrating.

“It’s worth celebrating in a good positive way. We’ve got a lot of good positive things and we just need to mind it,” she says noting the fragility of our natural resources.

One of her aims from the Fresh Water exhibition is to “make a space for people to say - ‘Oh there’s Deerpark River, and there’s Lough Ramor. And if they are worth painting, and they are worth looking at, then they are worth knowing about.”