Orla Clancy Irish artist, Limerick

Irish artist Orla Clancy, Limerick

I have a dual approach to making work, but observation is the foundation. I react to what is around me and what I am drawn to at any given time, and some days I am called to explore a possible narrative between random people I might have sketched or photographed, while other days I just want to draw or paint a landscape or still life or anatomy study – on the days I want to give the narrative a rest, as it were. The random people works are intense to make, as there is a conversation suggested, in addition to the working of the medium, be it oil, acrylic or watercolour. These narratives are not portraits, nor are they archetypes, but they are recognisable in their gestures – it is the communication, that which is not put into words, and is hard to pin down in an image unless it’s a snapshot caught in time. We might look at a landscape, piece of fruit, a naked body with a certain objectivity, but we’ve been in those conversations, and I think because the time taken to converse seems far more fleeting when compared with images of landscapes done many, many times over, either as paintings or photographs. The snapshot of the moment in the conversation has a totally different relationship to time and reality because of its potential layers of narrative and the inherent subjectivity on the part of everyone who engages with it. Only this relationship not actually depicted, merely suggested. This is why I make both random people snapshot paintings and more observation-based work like landscapes: the snapshots are related to and satisfy the heavy-duty story-telling my mind is constantly engaged in; and the observation-based work to satisfy my need to work with materials and create something visually believable, engagingly beautiful and sensually appealing; and each approach feeds the other.