The Place of Illustration within Contemporary Art: A Discussion

Tonight I will be on a panel discussing the place of illustration within contemporary art at the Irish Museum of Modern Art.

I used to be much exorcized on this issue but I haven't given it much thought in recent years so I have been dusting off a few ideas.

Thursday 5th December | 6.00pm - 7.00pm,  Lecture Room, IMMA 

In association with the forthcoming exhibition, Pictiúr: Exhibition of Children’s Illustrations, a panel discussion explores the place of illustration within contemporary art with artists and  illustrators. Speakers include Felicity Clear (artist),  P.J. Lynch (illustrator) and Chairperson, Brian Fay ( artists and Lecturer, DIT). 

The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Here is my piece from the latest IGI (Illustrators Guild of Ireland) exhibition, "The Art of Superstition", which opens this Friday at The Copper House in Dublin.
My picture illustrates a scene from "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Prints of all the exhibited pieces are available at the Copper House website
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Got the T-Shirt!

I was delighted when I received a nice parcel from Carol Lasky in Boston to-day.
It contained all sorts of posters, programmes and even a t-shirt that Cahoots had designed using my painting.
That's me at work on it in my old studio.

The Illustrated Beatles

The Illustrated Beatles is an exhibition by Illustrators Ireland:
43 classic Beatles songs visualised by 43 leading illustrators.
Alas I was too busy to get involved with this one, but I went along to the Grand Social on Tuesday for the opening.

That's me signing Tom Donegan's t-shirt.
The opening night was a blast and the artwork is fabulous. You can have a look and even buy a print or two at The Copper House Gallery's page.
Congratulations to everyone involved and particulaly to Peter Donnelly who put a huge amount of work into organising the show.

"Illustrating the Fantastic in Life and in Art"

I always liked that image in the previous post, but felt that the grimness of the Spirit was compromised by the cheery household scene that I had to show behind him.
Anyway I couldn't resist tweaking it while I had the image in Photoshop.
As happens so often, simplifying the picture seems to improve it a great deal.

I will be talking about "Illustrating the Fantastic in Life and in Art" at the National Gallery of Ireland on Saturday as part of the Study Morning on Fables and Fairy Tales in Irish Art.
I might well use this picture as a darker example of my work.

Illustrators Ireland's Website Makeover

Speaking of the IGI, the Illustrators Ireland website has had a very nice makeover courtesy of our web officer Stephen Synnott.
Great job Stephen.

Not Such A Cheery Christmas Illustration

Here's another Christmassy job I did just before the holidays.
It was for the ISPCC and it was to appear with a text that had a fairly sinister subtext about violence against children.
My painting was to seem wholesome and festive but with a subtle aspect of menace.

The Ghost of Christmas Present: Nearly There

MaryBrigid Turner bought me a coffee on Saturday afternoon when the picture was nearly finished, and we talked about the whole business of painting in public, the pros and cons. You can see the interview here at the Inís website
I reckon MB owed me the coffee as she was the one who dreamed up the whole idea of me as artist in residence in Hodges Figgis window.

The Ghost of Christmas Present: Help from the Punters

Here's a link to a story on RTE's News2Day programme about the painting in Hodges Figgis window.
The kids were from Griffeen Valley Educate Together School, and they had some great ideas that I was able to include in the finished painting.
I finished up yesterday and the picture will stay in the window till Christmas.
It's strange that it is all done now.
I was getting quite used to always having an audience behind me.
It was the weirdest week ever, but I really enjoyed it, and I got a heck of a lot of work done.
Many thanks to Conor, MaryBrigid, Stephen, Liam and all at Hodges Figgis for their help and hospitality.

The Ghost of Christmas Present: The First Steps

I got a good start on my big Christmas picture last night.
I got the whole thing scaled up on the 7’ by 4’ canvas, and I got a few hours of painting in.
It would be great if I could paint the whole thing in situ in Hodges Figgis bookshop, but there is going to be so much to do that I just have to get a start in the studio.
Also the light in the window is going to be very unpredictable and I will only have a four foot space to step back in, so I want to have my tonal values well established.
I am remembering too that the last picture I did of this size took four months and I am supposed to finish this one on Saturday.
Fingers crossed!

Artist in Residence in the Hodges Figgis Window

This is me measuring up the window of Hodges Figgis bookstore here in Dublin.
Next week I will be installing myself in this very window as their first ever artist in residence.
I have been asked to paint a huge new painting illustrating a scene from A Christmas Carol from next Wednesday the 23rd until the 26th or 27th, and at some point we will auction the original painting for charity.

I love the idea of working under that kind of time pressure, but the public spectacle aspect of it all might be harder to deal with.

Many thanks to my pal Conor Hackett for setting up this novel event!
And David Maybury who made this great little video, will be keeping an eye on my progress.

PJ Lynch plotting his Hodges Figgis Window from David Maybury on Vimeo.

Global Honour for Irish Examiner Ad

A nice pat on the back for me and Chemistry for our Examiner Billboard Adverts.
Somehow they managed not to mention me in this article, but we illustrators get used to that kind of thing.
See also The Inspiration Room.

Hell on Earth

The folks at Chemistry asked me to do another poster advertising a forthcoming series of articles in the Irish Examiner newspaper on the clergy in Ireland to-day.
They wanted a picture that looked like an old master painting but with a crowd of people in modern dress who are about to burn a priest at the stake. The scroll was my idea. What a fun brief!
Unfortunately I had a really short time to create the picture, so I developed a technique that is half oil painting and half Photoshop. I was very pleased with the result, which should start appearing on poster sites in Ireland next week.
Many thanks to all my friends and relations who volunteered to model for the crowd, and especially to my pal Giuseppe who was perfect as the priest.

Step by Step on the Boozy Irish Heroine

I did a step-by-step on the process of creating the illustration for the Irish Examiner poster.
You can see it at the IGI's blog, Scamp.

Oh Well That’s Just Lovely, Isn’t It?

Here's how the wide version of that poster looks in situ.
Thanks to Broadsheet for that. They have a few funny comments on it at their blog under the heading "Oh Well That’s Just Lovely, Isn’t It?".


Thanks to fellow IGI member Annie West for the heads up on this one.

My Boozy Celtic Heroine

I don't do a lot of ad jobs, but I was attracted to the idea of this one.
Binge drinking is a huge problem in Ireland and still our pub culture seems to be one of the biggest draws we have as a tourist destination.
To advertise a series of articles addressing the issue that will run in The Irish Examiner from Friday, I was asked to provide an image of a Celtic heroine who has had a few too many.
There is a full page ad in the Examiner to-day.
I had a lot of fun doing the research and the painting, and with a really tight deadline it was a great change from my usual children's book work.

Lucifer; The Light Carrier

When I was sharing a studio with a number of other illustrators some years ago we decided to produce a self promotional calendar.
I did this painting in response to the simple brief "Light" that we set for ourselves.
I found a print of it in my studio clear-out and enhanced the light effect in photoshop....the original was a bit lacklustre.
It's intriguing to me how Lucifer, the light carrier came to be one of the names associated with the Devil.
I was playing about a bit with preconceptions about light and dark, good and evil and even male and female in the image of an angel.

A Changeling Baby

I've been busy moving studio, and also moving house, so I have neglected the blog a bit. Sorry.
Here is another original I found during the moving process.


This picture illustrates a changeling story that was to be included in that anthology of Irish Fairy Tales that I was planning a number of years ago.
I have always though this to be a most sinister Irish tradition, and I am convinced that over the centuries the notion of a fairy being substituted for a healthy child was used as an excuse to do away with many sickly or malformed babies.
I can recommend a fascinating book by Angela Bourke called The Burning of Bridget Cleary for anyone with an interest in the subject.

For Every Child

I was honoured to be invited to join an international selection of illustrators who were asked to convey in pictures the fundamental rights that should belong to all children of the world.
It was especially pleasing that my picture was chosen for the cover of the book.
Here is a scan of the original artwork, just rediscovered at the back of my studio shelves.

The White Trout

I'm in the process of packing up my studio for the move to my new space in central Dublin's Dame Street, just a stone's throw from Dublin Castle.
Over the years we all accumulate a lot of surplus stuff that we think will be useful one day, and it's great to finally dump a load of it, and to whittle everything down to essentials.
Dredging through to the back of my shelves I have also discovered some long forgotten pictures.
Here are a couple of unpublished illustrations for a book of Irish Myths that never saw the light of day.
These illustrated a story called The White Trout.