Aisling lives in County Galway ,she loves her work as a massage therapist and essence maker in the Resting Tree , Bothar Mor in Galway City. She is inspired by nature and cats. Colour and texture light up her world .
Aisling describes below what inspired her to create the paintings we are presently exhibiting.
Materials include natural dyes, screen paint, acrylics and tissue paper .
“At the start of this year, I was approached by the poet, Aoife Reilly. I was so inspired by all of Aoife's poems it took weeks to settle on which ones to paint. I choose ‘August Mullach Mor’ ,’Spring Medicine’ and ‘Hydrogen plus Oxygen’.
After reading them over, I wanted to try and paint the poems. The imagery within the poems felt so naturally familiar: the words had such texture that it was like a creative blood transfusion into my days.
In ‘Spring Medicine’, it was the words. The words bottle the enchanting scent of gorse enchantment in February; when you drink in and hang on to any colour you can find after the blank canvas of winter. It was the watery-ness of ‘Hydrogen plus Oxygen’ - words that explain the feelings of water like, “water laps like a lullaby, my water sears the air”. The crystal clarity and gentle compassion in this poem grabbed me. In “August Mullah Mor”, the poem sounded like a cry: one that awakens a birth right of ever person to be a witness to this amazing life force we have been given .
Aisling O'Leary
torytops@fastmail.fm
Here you will find three of Aoife Reilly’s poems .
https://thegalwayreview.com/2015/06/02/aoife-reilly-three-poems/