Deirdre Shanley

The focus for my art is primarily the landscape around me, and my emotional connection to it. I love how colour and light change as the seasons change. I find that winter allows the countryside to reveal its deeper forms and the trees expose their skeletal structure.

For Brief 1 of the DVI course, I chose the apple tree beside the house as my theme. The tree, planted by my grandparents in the 1930s is, I feel, part of their legacy. This theme of legacy was also present in my final DVI project entitled, ‘Heritage’. I endeavoured to evoke a dialogue between the past and the present, and to explore identity and memory. I focused mainly on the landscape, in particular the hawthorn tree, some found objects, an old mass concrete wall and the tradition of the open fire.

My work has always involved printmaking, especially carborundum and drypoint. The DVI course gave me an opportunity to explore monoprinting and also to experiment with a wide range of materials and processes inspired by artists such as Jim Dine, Alice Maher, Paula Rego, Peter Doig, Bart Lodewijks, Anne Yeats and Nano Reid, to name but a few.