So this morning, after visiting Ennis Garda station to check if it was ok, I drove to Ennistymon to visit Veerla, who is a carer/gardener. Veerla looks to be in her early 50’s, and lives in a cottage, with no neighbours, as there are no houses within view of hers. Its pretty isolated. Veerla was a support worker with the brothers of charity but no longer since Covid. She is currently building a garden for a homeless hub in Ennis and planning a co-op greenhouse collective with some friends.
It was raining off and on all morning so the drawing was done in between and during showers. Veerla was dismantling a greenhouse at the side of her house. She had made the greenhouse originally out of an old trampoline she’d bought for €7. pretty cool! I took a lot of photos and I plan to develop some more drawings from these as I don’t feel I resolved a lot with the drawings I made today. Yesterdays drawings at spanish point told more of a story than today’s do. But that’s ok, and I feel there is potential with the last drawings I made, which feature Veerla, her daughter Lara, and her friend Irene having tea sitting around chatting. They were having a deep discussion over an altercation Veerla had with a friend, and I want to see if I can make some of that visible in the drawings.
Its not that a narrative has to be there, but more that I discovered there was a narrative to yesterdays work, and I think with some development there could be more to discover from today’s drawings. I will work on making some more drawings from these last drawings, along with the photos I took, over the weekend. If I can get into the studio. I would like to try making one or two on my brown crinkly paper. The crinkles mean you are both competing with them when you make a mark but also allowing the crinkles to mutate the drawing. Again although I don’t much like these drawings below that does not really matter. they serve a purpose and have successfully given me a visual reminder and experience of what its like to live in a place like Ballagh, Ennistymon. There is definitely a different way of life in these places than what I know. When you are there, urban spaces, even Ennis, feel so very far away. They have to rely on each other much more and there appear to be strong community links as they literally need them to survive, on a practical level as well as a social one.
