Aisling Drennan
Aisling Drennan makes abstract oil paintings about the variable properties of oil paint, how it can be structured and the consequence of mark-making on canvas.
Working analytically the paintings are visual dialogues seeking the delicate balance between chaos and structure with a ruthlessness in how information is selected and deleted.
Each painting is constructed to a point of completion through a process of paint layering and specific application of vinyl tape. It is then deconstructed through the removal of tape, revealing painted under and over layers; a practice of finding and loosing the painting until visually robust.
Her practice is influenced by the abstract expressionist movement and the expressive content of her own experiences as a professional dancer. Artists such as Joan Mitchell, Sean Scully, Fiona Rae and Willem de Kooning have informed her development arriving at its current state where the onus is on the physical act of painting.
Drennan’s approach to painting is playful even irresponsible at times; a concoction of ultimate strife and ultimate indulgence.
Can you tell me a bit about you/your background? (eg where are you from/based? What has your educational path been like or are you self-taught?)
I’m originally from the west of Ireland. I came to London after being offered a Masters in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins. When I finished in 2014, I decided to try and base myself in London as I had built up connections with fellow artists as well as galleries that I wanted to nurture. My first studio was an old, smelly kebab shop on the Holloway road but it was free! Between working various jobs to support my practice I managed to find time to make work and soon I was getting accepted for exhibition and commissions and gaining recognition through shortlistings for competitions like the John Moores painting prize, VAO and Jackson’s Open.
When did you first discover art? and when did you realise that you wanted to pursue it professionally?
My mom is an artist (www.DoreenDrennan.com) so art was something I grew up with and naturally aspired to. I first had a career as a professional Irish dancer with Riverdance touring internationally for years before taking my place at art school but I always had my sketchbook in my suitcase. There are definitely elements of my dance career that have a place in my painting, for example, collectors regularly comment on the fluidity and sense of movement within my work. It was always a goal to go to art school and establish myself as an artist which can be a bit risk taking adventure. Committing to this career is a noble thing; it’s courageous to put yourself into a precarious position, trying to make it in an industry that has very few entrances, and even fewer moments of luck but I just didn’t want to do anything else.
Could you name a book you would recommend to every artist? (Not necessarily art-related)
AA Milnes’ “Winnie the Pooh” was on my reading list for my Masters degree - I enjoyed it!
“Inside The Painter’s Studio” by Joe Fig because I feel you always learn a little more about the artist when you get a sense of their studio space.
Do you have any advice for other artists? Particularly students/emerging?
If it was easy everyone would be an artist - be realistic, work hard, stick to your guns and just go for it if its what you really want!
Favourite woman artist and why/how has she/her art or life inspired you?
Joan Mitchell - I discovered her work during my BA fine art at GMIT, Ireland. Her work has been continually informative as well as inspiring for me plus she was one of the major female painters of the abstract expressionist movement from which my practice stems. I have a book on her work and regularly flick through it - the fluidity, palette and conviction of her work still continues to surprise me.
What is your process like? (Do you do a lot of research? Do you favour an intuitive approach? Do you do a lot of preparatory studies? Do you use photography/digital media? Do you concentrate on just one piece or do you work on several at the same time? How long do you spend working on each piece?)
I am very process based and pretty much follow the same path - I build up my visual diaries with studies, thoughts, comments, paint experimentations and then transfer what works onto canvas. I have a shelf full of visual diaries in my studio now that acts like a big back catalogue to my practice and visually explains all the work I’ve made to date. I really appreciate them and use them whenever I hit a ‘block’.
Do you have any exhibitions coming up? Where/when? Tell us about them/what are they about?
I have just been offered a solo show at the Graham Hunter gallery (march 2-15) here in London. This will be my second time exhibiting with this gallery and I will be showing work made during a residency I did last year at Cill Rialaig artists retreat in the west of Ireland.
‘ It’s absolutely impossible, but it has possibilities.’
These words from the film producer Samuel Goldwyn might equally have been uttered by the painter Aisling Drennan, whose colourful, layered Abstract Expressionist-style canvases are a series of endless possibility, of unresolved experimentation, of contumacious contradictions. Constructing and deconstructing, concealing and revealing, Drennan’s mark-making creates both chaos and structure, a concoction of intuition and organicness, submitted to analysis, until some form of resolve is determined. Never a fixed conclusion, however, or, as Samuel Beckett writes: ‘Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.’1
But, to the viewer, Drennan’s paintings are far from being failures. The vast, freewheeling swathes of paint sweep you up, taking you, willing or not, on a stormy journey, a rollercoaster ride, across and deep within the canvas, destination unknown. As painterly, or malerisch, as Drennan’s surface brushstrokes might be, there is nevertheless a depth to her canvases, with their partially visible geometric lines and boxes, drawn in charcoal, à la de Kooning, leading you within, underneath the waves, drowning you in the intense primary colours that ‘pop’ against one another in a playful, sometimes seemingly reckless, way. ‘You have to have colour and light,’ Drennan exclaims. ‘My god! And yellow is just a feel‐good colour, really. It physically makes me happy to look at it.’ But reds and blues, ochres, and sometimes blacks, rear their heads as well, like animals from within, each opening a dialogue, interrupting, rejoining, and drawing the others into a spirited conversation, a song, or maybe even a dance. The choreography is free, but there is an underlying internal logic, a set of steps and movements that may be exploited and utilised in infinite combination. Drennan paints always at arm’s length, from the shoulder and elbow, avoiding the contrivance of anything produced too painstakingly close up.
Nevertheless, there is a beautiful concentration as she works steadily, aiming for the marathon, not the sprint. ‘Without leaps of imagination, or dreaming, we lose the excitement of possibilities. Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning.’2
The lyricism of a painting extends beyond the individual canvas, with one work leading on to the next, which is born, inevitably, out of a ‘niggling’ point of its predecessor, begun before its parent is fully matured. The process is empirical, as Drennan takes, reappropriates and develops: ‘There is no performance – it’s all one big rehearsal’. The subject she seeks to explore is the very stuff of painting itself: its materiality and physicality. The only narrative is a narrative of process, of exploration and development from one work to the next – from one layer to the next
– building up memories and traces, a series of wounds and scars, with new life blossoming afresh at each turn along the way. A work may take months to complete, as she applies masking tape, charcoal and coats of oil paint, before removing the tape, applying more paint, often time and time again, ever reassessing, redirecting, accepting the inevitable but entirely unpredictable happy accident. In an age of digital perfection, Drennan is an artist to whom the term ‘practice’ – with all the inherent hope, failure, and possibility – truly applies.
© Anna McNay, 2017
1 Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho, 1983
2 Gloria Steinem, American feminist, journalist, and social and political activist