My artist journey has been a bit of a “hop on, hop off” bus tour! The mission of my life has been to embody myself in the Artist and it has been a 16 year ride. My first stop in pursuit of an artistic profession was as a visual artist. I spent three years painting and drawing and I was sure that I would go to do a Fine Art degree, alas, i missed my stop!
Off down the road I went and found myself enrolled in a theatre training 4 year course in Dublin’s fair city! The Bull Alley theatre company gave me my first professional title. I was now qualified to say, “I am a Performing Artist”. In these words I found an artistic freedom of expression and understood my place as a physical, expressive undefinable artist.
Next stop…Doolin!
Having completed my training in Dublin, I knew it was time to return home to the west and figure out the next chapter. I immersed myself in Irish music and song and felt a need to bind myself to my culture. My driving force was to find my truest artistic expression. To be an authentic Irish artist, I needed to be connected to my country’s expression of art. Folklore and the land, the Cliffs of Moher, the sea, the wind and the tunes all anchored me into my artistic soul.
Having completed my training in Dublin, I knew it was time to return home to the west and figure out the next chapter. I immersed myself in Irish music and song and felt a need to bind myself to my culture. My driving force was to find my truest artistic expression. To be an authentic Irish artist, I needed to be connected to my country’s expression of art. Folklore and the land, the Cliffs of Moher, the sea, the wind and the tunes all anchored me into my artistic soul.
All aboard for Germany!
I went on tour to Germany with the Wilde Shamrock Theatre Company. We went on the road for eleven weeks, singing and acting and it was in Germany that I began to truly recognise myself as a singer. A door flew open and I walked right through.
I went on tour to Germany with the Wilde Shamrock Theatre Company. We went on the road for eleven weeks, singing and acting and it was in Germany that I began to truly recognise myself as a singer. A door flew open and I walked right through.
A chance meeting with a German singer and performer, Andy Lang, added another very exciting stop on my tour of life! I was now to be brought to Germany again for a series of five concerts supporting him for St.Patrick’s week. I never in my wildest dreams had imagined myself as a folk singer, and yet, here I was, my little ukulele in hand, singing Sonny (which I translated into German) to 500 people. I had caught the bug. I knew that I loved theatre and stage, but when you add the music in, it is, for me, absolute perfection.
Home again, in the west of Ireland, I needed to find a stage. It was clear to me now that the place for me in this world was performing. With no theatre shows in Co. Clare, I found myself in a band with my oldest school friend and began gigging around my local county. This medium as a performance Artist was indeed the most challenging and exciting space I had held. The transient pub crowd! How to hold attention, how to command and not demand, to entertain boldly or disappear meekly, to weave in the craic and smooth out the manic, to spark to quench, to be both there and not, to show no fear yet be vulnerable! This is where all my training really happened, this was the masters!
Humming along to the songwriter.
As an Artist, I feel my job is to assimilate an emotion and recapitulate that internal process so as to give that metamorphosis back to the viewer. The beauty of writing a song. It comes to you, moves through you and does not belong to you absolutely fascinates me. You have to ask yourself, how do I tell this story within this framework, how do I fit a novel of emotions into a song? All the bits of songs that I had been forming in my head for years all bubbled up to the surface and now that I had my own permission, I could now call myself a singer. The next step was to give myself the title of ‘singer songwriter’. All these titles mean so much to an Artist, because in the telling of these words there is a blessed vulnerability to own your words.
And so…
The last stop on this journey is the most expansive. I have found myself being described by others and in consequence by myself as a ‘Conceptual Artist’. I have found the most comfort and in contrast the most challenge in this kind of description. When working on something now, I am moved to dig deeper into the concepts of the work. What is the driving force behind the piece, the song, the picture, the story.
And the final step off the bus today brings us to collaboration.
Joining forces with other fully embodied Artists is the ultimate expression of my love for the Arts. Working with Artists, sharing a passion, abandoning egos, having spontaneous craic and ultimate faith is quite frankly, my happy place.
Although there may be many branches on this Artist tree (artistry) there is still one trunk and core root system. I have grown this Artistree from one seed and I am continually branching out looking and stretching towards the light, whilst being deeply connected to my roots and Ancestree in the dark.