Project Description

As part of my portfolio of public art for Negative Space Art Collective I painted this piece for People Of Clare Against Genocide, finishing it Monday 23rd September. I calculated the hours it took and overall it was approx 29 hours. Including travel, stencilling, painting but not including design or preparation.

When Brian and Sarah from People Of Clare Against Genocide approached me about painting a mural I explained I was happy to if they could find a wall. I had had such challenges finding sites myself for larger pieces in Ennis that I was dubious about whether they would be able to find one. In fairness, they did and so then we set about finding a time and a design for the space.

Concept wise I wanted it to fit in with the surrounding environment and to visually not take from the beautiful mural on the wall opposite, which as far as I know was a commemoration of two young boys who were killed during 1916 rising and was painted by Marcus O’ Connor and Shane O Driscoll. It is a very well planned piece and fits well in its space and environmentally So my piece needed to match this one in terms of scale and planning. I thought about the practical element of working in this space- the laneway is narrow and when cars drive up and down which they do frequently the space available is very limited. Painting on the long wall would have been a risky and frustrating endeavour. I decided to focus on the end wall for the main piece, and stencil a design onto the side wall that would lead the eye down and around the corner to the main piece.

Sinead, owner of the shop Cornucopia which the mural is painted on, was happy to support the project but understandably did not want anything too controversial or contentious as subject matter. Given the contentiousness of the subject matter in general- the Palestinian occupation and genocide- it needed to be something that would not create negative press. So the message needed to focus on hope as opposed to anger. I had researched images and decided that Palestinian children would work- but again focusing on the hope aspect. I found a gorgeous photo on the Unicef website that I felt would work- 4 young kids in a row holding hands smiling, bundled up in coats and layers, but with little barefeet. Against a blurred background of a ruined urban environment. I decided to plan the design around this image.

When the time came that I had a window free to paint we were clearly smiled upon by the gods- we had a week, an actual week, of no rain, mid September, which allowed me to work non stop at the mural for the week and get it done. On account of the height of the wall -we had no scaffolding, so needed ladders to access the upper 1/2- this meant the painting process took slightly longer but in fairness Brian or Sarah from POCAG were there most of the time to help, and their colleague Mohammed was there the rest of the time. So I had someone to hold the ladder to prevent me falling to certain death most of the time :)

POCAG had painted the entire two walls black previously at my request so I had this onerous part of the job done. The process of painting the wall was grand, especially as most of the time there was someone there from POCAG to answer questions from onlookers which meant I didn’t have to. People are entitled to ask questions and make comments- after all if you don’t like this then don’t paint murals in public- but if you stop to talk to every single person you will get no work done.

It took me a good while to get it right- I had to repaint the kids faces a couple of times until I got them as close to right as I could. I wanted the kids to be in focus and the background to be blurred, hazy, so the kids would ‘pop’ visually. I stencilled keys and doves across and through the background (The Palestinian key is the Palestinian symbol of homes lost in the Nabka, when more than half of the population of mandatory Palestine were either expelled or fled violence in the  19498 Palestine Expulsion and flight and subsequently denied the right to return. The key is considered part of a hope for return and a claim to the lost properties. source- Wikipedia)

The doves are a symbol of peace. I drew the keys and doves freehand first onto brown paper and then cut them out so as to make sure the freehand nature of the mural was retained stylistically throughout. I wanted these two elements- the keys and the doves- to be there but not too visually obvious. they are clearly to be seen on the side wall when you travel in through the lane and then can be seen as visual echoes on the main wall. 

Overall I am happy enough with it- I was tempted to make more changes but I know enough that it can be overworked too and end up being too fussy and visually messy.

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