Artistic License: Deirdre Frost - The Gloss Magazine

Artistic License: Deirdre Frost

The Cork-based artist’s latest exhibition is inspired by her interest in our relationship with the earth …

How do you define your work and style?

My work is part surrealist landscape, part cityscape reconfigured as still life, and part abstraction as I reduce my local landscape into simplified forms. I work primarily in oil painting on wood, using imagery from built and natural environments, paying particular attention to wild plant life, which I reconfigure to consider new narratives.

Who or what kickstarted your interest in art?

I’ve always had a love of drawing since earliest childhood. During my art teacher Aine Andrew’s Leaving Cert classes I was immersed in my work, absolutely oblivious to what was going on around me! I loved that utter escape from the banality of school life, as I perceived it as a teenager.

My first encounter with the collection in the Art Institute of Chicago over 20 years ago really blew me away. They have a vast collection spanning centuries, including some of the finest works by the most well-known artists of each era that I would have previously seen only in books. I remember encountering the Impressionists, whose work has such incredible vitality and humanity. I could see all of the brush strokes on the canvas and in that instant it became so clear to me how these “greats” were also people who figured out their way through life by applying paint to canvas. It was very exciting.

“I would describe my work as play, but I don’t think there’s anything I have ‘worked’ harder at!”

Where and how do you work?

The first impression on seeing my work is of colour and form. I use these much as a musician would use the basic notes of the scale on which to build a piece of music – by adding tonal colour to surpass the basic elements and create something of human connection. I play with the visual material of buildings and plants until I have come up with something that tells a new story.

I paint in my studio at Backwater Artists’ Studios in Cork, in a building that used to be a granary. It’s full of character and retains some of its old machinery within. The studio is a 20-minute walk across town from home, so I notice details along the way and might snap some quick photos, while conversations with friends, news or current affairs replay in my head. I usually have multiple paintings on the go, so the studio gets very messy as I make my way through a body of work, but I like to do a deep clean after sending my paintings off for exhibition before starting the next project.

“The abundant thriving plants in these paintings act as signifiers of hope and regeneration in this shared space of the man-made.”

Tell us about your new exhibition, Tumbling Earth, and its inspiration?

I’ve been preoccupied with the idea of the earth and of our human relationship to it. I’ve been thinking about soil, which nurtures all living things then absorbs them back into itself, and the planet as land that is ‘owned’ and fought for globally. In this exhibition, I paint black densely textured areas containing root fragments, while the buildings are open, topple and crack.

I had a particular interest in thornier plants for this exhibition: plants that are inconvenient to us, yet they are pollen-rich and full of character. Nettles, brambles and thistles are painted decoratively within defined sections, or break from their contained spaces, tumbling across the picture plane. The abundant thriving plants in these paintings act as signifiers of hope and regeneration in this shared space of the man-made.

Need to know: Deirdre Frost’s exhibition “Tumbling Earth” at the Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Chancery Lane, Dublin 8 until February 8. www.kevinkavanagh.ie @deirdrefrostart

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