Fiona Stapleton

I completed numerous painting workshops and created a large scale swallow painting, inspired by one that visits our home every year. With print I created screen prints, lino and relief prints with the help of the tutors and inspiration from different artists. For sculpture and combined media I created large origami birds and well as a mixed collage piece.

Ideas development notebook

I did a lot of research on how and why birds flock which I found very interesting, mostly it is for a sense of safety and security in numbers. Some birds will start to swarm together when it is their time to migrate to a different country.

I want to try capture the movement of flocking birds with this piece. I find the grouping of these birds to be fascinating, I am using paper as the material it is very light and will be easily moved by air.

I found the screen printing workshop to be very informative and learned a lot more about the different ways to print, for this piece I used a reference image of the Clare Glens waterfall. I wanted to capture the natural landscape and flow of the water in a more graphic design. Again i was very inspired by the Irish landscape and the beauty in the natural world.

For this print I wanted to showcase the significance of the Swallow in irish culture, the bird is seen in a lot of Irish art and music. One song in particular titled “The Swallowtail Jig” an Irish folk song reminds me of growing up in a traditional Irish household, the song is often played at Fleadh Cheoils which I used to go to with my cousins nearly every year.

This piece titled “The plague” conveys a swarm of locusts made completely out of dollar bills. His use of different materials is something I found quite playful. The intent behind this is show how money is a plague on our humanity, i found the meaning behind this quite impactful.

Video of all the sketches I did from Mondays workshop with Eoin

I started two lino cuttings, again going with my theme of migration of birds and the natural environment that surrounds them. I finished cutting these yesterday so I am looking forward to see how they turn out once they’re printed. I was inspired heavily by Jim dine’s prints of Crows for this piece.

On Mondays workshop with Eoin, we did a lot of thirty second life drawings using a model. He switched poses every few seconds so we were able to create a lot of movement in the sketches. It was more about the gesture of the figure rather than a more detailed sketch. We also completed a few ten minute sketches which I think I prefer to the shorter timed poses as I got a bit more time to focus in on the proportions.

Artist research - David Lilburn

Artist research - Jim Dine

I wanted to use the scraps from my prints to create a collage piece. I started this using watercolours and painting a river landscape, taking inspiration from a photo I had taken of the river where I live. For my project I wanted to incorporate the movement of the river and nature along with the flight of the birds above. I added the scrap fabric I had leftover from printing as well as a few fabric flowers. I then added details with pens and markers. I love how this piece turned out and really like the different textures in it.

I did the print workshop in which we printed with found materials, I wanted to incorporate the movement of birds and made stencils of swallows out of cardboard to use in my prints. I used fabric and dried leaves to create a background and printed over them with the birds. I really enjoyed learning this technique of printing.

I finally finished my swallow painting yesterday, I used acrylic paint and markers to add some details. When I finished I ended up cropping the page a bit as I didn’t like how uneven the paper was when I first cut it and I think it made the piece look a lot more put together. I’m happy with how the birds chest feathers look, I spent a lot of time colour matching with the photograph I took to get the different tones right.

I found inspiration from a photograph I had taken of a swallow that used to sit on the wind chimes at our front door at home every evening. It would come back every day without fail. I decided to research swallows more as I find them to be very elegant birds and fascinate me. Swallows migrate to Africa during winter but always come back to the same next when they come back to Ireland. The massive trip they take twice a year just to come back to the same place is an idea I really loved.