The Swamp Project

Red

2010-04-26T05:45:00.000-07:00

I went to NYC on the weekend and saw "Red" a play about the artist Rothko. This was a beautifully sculptured extremely contemporary rant by the renowned artist Rothko played by Alfred Molina. The bearer of Rothko's constant rages and musings is the thoughtful yet feisty studio assistant Ken played by Eddie Redmayne. I am not an art critic but I come away from this play with a few personal insights spurred on by this interesting performance.
One. Red is one of my favorite colors and I use it as much as possible when I paint. I derive great joy from the color red and get extremely happy when I buy a new tube of red paint. It always reminds me of kindergarten where the red, blues and yellows were stored in plastic cups and issued along with big brushes for liberal and sometimes diabolical use. Throwing great globs of red paint on a paper pad along with paste eating are probably the highlights of my elementary education.

Two. My mother and grandmother insisted on painting their kitchen cupboards enamel red. Grandma Black embellished her cabinets with a jungle scene complete with spider monkeys and my mom stuck to the brightest china berry red she could find. I think both of them used the red color to jolly their selves into the room that demanded they exercise the most constant boring daily cooking chores and to make a statement about the importance of their domains.

Three. I have tried really hard to wrap my head around Rothko's majestic sense of himself and his art. I have tried by taking off my glasses and squinting, by taking deep breaths and finally facing the damn paintings down. I have also tried comparing his work to the old masters and looking for clues of luminosity, color and tone. In the end I bless him for his efforts and wish him great attention in the after life.

Four. He simply reminded me of Rudy, my last boyfriend's grandfather a sweet man when he wasn't screaming about life in a abrupt Austrian Viennese accent. Rudy would also rant about social injustice and the perfection of his ecology based poetry. Somehow I couldn't buy his greatness then and I suspect if I had known Rothko..... well who can say? I still love red.

Video from the Industrial Strength Opening

2010-03-24T15:12:00.000-07:00

Artists have celebrated landscapes since the first chunks of charcoal were rubbed on cave walls. Through history artists have tried, with varying degrees of success, to capture the bucolic and stunning views of nature -- mountains, trees, the sky -- that surround them.

Today, artists are often confronted with a very different kind of landscape, the post-industrial urban landscape of the 21st century. But inspiration remains the same.

In cities like Bridgeport, Connecticut, we are surrounded by the remnants of a once-thriving manufacturing community. All Bridgeporters can resonate in some way to the towering red and white-banded United Illuminating smoke stack, or to the crumbling hulks of once-thriving factory buildings that, in their prime, made Bridgeport one of the Northeast’s greatest industrial cities.

It is easy to vilify the industrial landscape as ugly or depressing, but through the eyes of an artist the sights that are so repellant to some, emerge with hidden, sometimes breathtaking, beauty.

The show features several of my "Steel Mill" paintings.

2010-03-24T06:51:00.000-07:00

The process of making art is akin to being "swamped"

2010-03-24T06:36:00.000-07:00

Art making can be complex but it is not necessarily for all artists an overwhelming proposition. I would like to believe that there must be creative people out there with uncluttered minds. "sigh"
I happen to be the owner of a cluttered and swollen heap of embedded images that swim and and bang around in my head. I constantly collect images, information and ideas and need to purge them on a daily basis.
Fortunately, sketching early in the morning leads me to a drainage site that gives access to my most immediate particulates of subconscious and conscious debris. It is during the early hours that I am able to download new material for my paintings. Sometimes these are in the form of pencil sketches, and at other times full blown mini paintings.

4- Definition of Swamp- Webster's Dictionary

2010-03-24T06:30:00.000-07:00

To overwhelm numerically or by an excess of something.

3. Swamp Definition- Oxford English Dictionary

2010-03-24T06:28:00.000-07:00

Attributes and comb. as swamp dweller, earth-land lover, muck, mud, peat, shell side soil, water.

2010-03-24T06:26:00.000-07:00

2. Definition of Swamp

2010-03-24T06:14:00.000-07:00

A mushroom. Obs rare-1631 widowes Nat. Philos 39. In the body of the larch tree groweth Fungus Agaricus a swamp or mushroom.

The Oxford -English Dictionary Definition

2010-03-24T05:52:00.000-07:00

1. SWAMP- a tract of low lying ground in which water collects; a piece of wet spongy ground; a marsh or bog. Origin: in early use only in American colonies where it denoted a tract of rich soil having trees and other vegetation to moist for cultivation.

Ginger Hanrahan- The Swamp Project

2010-03-19T19:31:00.000-07:00

I am a visual artist. I make paintings and work also with hand-made felt and occasionally embellish my pieces with more felt, embroidery, yarn and wire. I am constantly collecting images, most of the time they are subconscious but I also save information in all of the usual ways.

I keep notes, drawings, photos and drawings of doodles on small scraps of napkins and paper plates and my hands. I collect patterns of all sorts. Too me, life is a collection of patterns.

Now to get to the reason why I am calling my blog the "Swamp Project." I think of life as a collection of activities that includes my artwork, family, experiences and various interests that are all living together in a metaphorical "swamp." I believe that everything in life gets collected and jumbled together into a collective, primordial /organic mass. Sometimes the various pieces of life are clearly articulated and at other times they all get blended and squished together until they are integrated in an almost invisible fashion. That being the case, the squished parts still provide a supportive platform for living life.

Inspiration for this project is also provided by the soggy, pond-like affair we lovingly refer to as the " swamp," located directly across the road from my home. I am not really sure if it can be technically classified as a swamp, but it seems to have all the prerequisite feature: brackish water, rotting trees, moss-covered trees, lots of birds, frogs and otter-like animals.

I'm very certain that seeing and hearing this swamp on a daily basis through all the seasons at every hour of the day has influenced the subjects, designs, moods and colors found in my paintings.