My Irish Molly
Bloomsday on the 16th of June celebrates the day that is written about in Joyce’s novel Ulyses where “Stately Buck Mulligan” makes his way around the coast from Sandycove to Howth. Every year, some folk dress in Edwardian costume and reenact scenes from the famous book. My favourite part of the book is a soliloquy by the heroine Molly Bloom where she remembers being seduced on the cliffs of Howth Head in her youth.
“...and Gibraltar as a girl where I was a Flower of the mountain yes when I put the rose in my hair like the Andalusian girls used or shall I wear a red yes and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”
I have loved and used Molly Bloom’s soliloquy from Ulysses by Irish writer James Joyce (1882 to 1941) many times in my work. Her words appear on torn scraps of exclamations amidst many of my highly decorative and textured flower paintings. However, this was the first time that I have combined these words as collage with one of my nudes. I started using collage combined with watercolour many years ago as I loved the interplay between opaque and translucent layers. It added an altogether different feel to traditional watercolours and opened my world up to new possibilities.
Watercolour and Collage Study for “Her Breasts All Perfume” 29.7 x 42.0 cm (available for sale here)
“Her Breast’s All Perfume” Molly Bloom’s Soliloquy from Ulysses by James Joyce.
Watercolour and Collage Final Version Painting “Her Breasts All Perfume” 50 × 40 cm (original sold)
As a lover of colours and Klimt, I gave this painting my “all” in terms of gesture and adornment. The sensuality of Molly’s prose equalled my passion for painting it, and I really went to town on the overt nature of this piece of writing from Joyce. While sketching some of the preliminary work, I experimented with using different colours and styles for the setting. Molly’s thoughts flit like butterflies on the breeze and I thought it would be fun to produce a series of sketches on the different ‘moods’ of Molly. “...Shall I wear a red Yes...” expresses a whimsical side to this Earth Goddess (as seen in the small sketch). Whereas the excerpt “...and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume...” reveal the power of womanhood at its best.
Watercolour and Pastel (small sketch) “Shall I Wear Red Yes” 21.0 × 29.7 cm (original sold)
These paintings from my collection of works stand out on their own in terms of technique and subject matter, where I allowed both the frivilous and passionate sides of life to mingle together and dare I say, become fun! In the same period as working on Molly, I was also painting a portrait of James Joyce from his death mask that you can find in the Joyce Museum in the Martello Tower in Sandycove.
I am not a scholar of Joyce. But from what I have read I can say that his genius is remarkable. When working on some pieces for an exhibition on Joycean-themed images I started to explore the writings of Joyce from a different viewpoint. I wondered what it must have been like to be in his head with so many overlapping ideas, words, and imagery. It seemed to me that Joyce wanted to encompass more than just mere words in his writing. His invented language for Finnegans Wake comes alive when it is read aloud and on hearing this, I started to “see” images in the sounds.
“Mememormee”, was the working title for a painting that started with a portrait done from Joyce’s death mask. While working on it I became aware that I was entering an other worldness. While I painted I heard repeatedly the words, in memorium, in memorium... The Word, Mememormee, taken from the last passage of Finnegans Wake where Annalivia Plurabelle is dying, suited the sounds that I was intuitively hearing, so this became the title of the painting.
While working abstractly I often reach a place in the painting where I have to ‘listen’ to the painting in order to know what happens next. It cannot be worked through as an intellectual process, rather an intuitive one. As I painted, night-time images and sounds of the sea entered my mind in waves and I stared to see an imaginary seascape at night of the view from the back of Joyce’s Tower. However, the physical image of the Tower is not present in the painting. I felt it didn’t need to be there as Joyce’s craggy profile embodied the spirit of the Tower. The waves from the sea wash over his memory, crashing and lashing against the visionary words contained in Finnegans Wake.
As a visual artist, I felt the need to physically reunite the last and first sentences of the book in a patchwork of torn collage amidst the splintered shoreline of the coast, which contains the memories of my youth, as well as being the setting for many of Joyce’s works.
Mixed Media “Finnegans Wake” 40 × 50 cm