Without Creativity I am nothing. I would dive into a deep depression. I need Art. Art is everything to me.
Ronan Cahill lives in Livingston, Scotland.
Robert Montgomery the Scottish poet/neon artist had one that read, “The point of Art is to touch the heartstrings of someone you will never meet.” I think as artists that’s exactly what we are trying to do. There is an importance to leave a vague mystery in each work, to get the viewer thinking. I love when people see things I have not seen within the work. It means the painting is alive.
My artistic influences are many, from music album covers growing up to artists that the young Ronan was inspired by. Schiele, Munch, Picasso and Van Gogh. Jack Yeats. Basquiat was a huge influence when I was growing up in inner city Dublin in the 90s. There was a confidence, a boldness, and immediacy to his works. He was not afraid to get to the point. I read a lot on art and artists. I have always loved Scottish Artist Joan Eardley’s work. The wild abstractness of her landscapes is amazing. Later influences are Alvaro Castegnet and Aine Divine (for the boldness of watercolour), the abstract paintings of Tracy Emin, portraits of Jenny Saville, and the huge expansive pieces by Julie Mehretu.
Art has always been inside. My paternal grandad sketched landscapes in rural Offaly. My mum’s family have had artists going back generations in Dublin, and a first cousin that was a famous sculptor in Cork. My mum is a fine oil painter herself. So that normalised it a bit. I could never just cut it out, it is here to stay. It is who I am. I cannot escape it. If I am not painting, then I am thinking of painting. I see things and ideas form. I am torn sometimes between the representative and the abstract but lately the abstract is winning. I must paint this inward sense of what I feel about my surroundings rather than painting just what these eyes see. I don’t know, it is something that got in my system as a child and the desire to be an artist never left me.
I do not tend to come to the blank page with any preconceptions. I am an artist. I create things from nothing. As the initial layers go on, they influence each other. The previous stroke has an influence, on the next one and so on. I like to think that with each layer I try to bring some level of balance to the next one, and so on. The balance is compositional, it is line versus colour, it is warmth versus coolness, it is a balance of dark versus light. All going back to the chaos of the first layer. As artists we are illusionists, and I strive to create the illusion of depth on the two-dimensional surface continuously.
I start always from nothing, a blank page. I come to the page without preconceptions about what will happen (this defeats all artist’s block and negative thoughts that I have no ideas today. It is my job to show up only). The first layer is the wild layer. This is where the excitement comes from. Colours blend and mix. I have studied colour theory, and art theories concerning composition/balance/ light/dark, warm/cool. At the moment that is within me, and comes out organically as I paint. I don’t consciously think so much in the process itself. It is my job however to create a painting that gives the viewer a dynamic interest. I try to induce a sense of movement. With each layer, I see something different within the piece, and the piece drives itself in a different direction. The closer to the end of the process I start to introduce details. I get quite lost in the works, time disappears, and there is just me and the page. Sometimes it seems like I have miles to walk with the work, but suddenly out of nowhere a minor detail added resolves the piece. I spend a lot of time just standing back and staring into the work. I then know which way to go next.
When it comes to painting, I use it as a tool of self-discovery. I get lost inside the time/space/moment/ colour/texture/line/ wash of it all. Minutes can pass or hours can pass. And then something taps me on the shoulder and says, you are finished, Ronan. I look at that painting and my ambition is to follow it with a painting that learns something from the previously completed work. It is a path of personal evolution and there is no way to know where it will lead in the end. It is a path that will end with death, I guess. I used to think I did three or four separate art things. I don’t, they are all the same. Creation. Full stop. When I was young and in my 20s, I had all the time in the world, I was living life, I had a dream of becoming an artist that never died, but I wasn’t ready for the obstacles adult life throws at the artist to stop the artist in their tracks. I wasn’t serious about it enough then to die for it. Now I am older I am suddenly aware that we do not know how long any of us have to live. I don’t necessarily want to become rich or famous, I will settle for leaving behind a body of work that is important to me. To this end I do not let a day go by without creating at least one image, whether its drawings, paintings, or digital art.
For me there is no artist’s block, as long as you promise to show up it will happen. I haven’t been to university to study art. I have a mechanical engineering degree. Maybe being told I couldn’t study art at school, reinforced it more in me that I needed to be an artist. But this was the early nineties in Dublin and there were no jobs. Things were bleak. My dad convinced me to study engineering instead of pursuing art, and after a few years of working I could decide myself on whether I still wanted to pursue art. At UCD I won the Society of Visual Art first prize in 1997. I have supplemented by reading all the theories of art I possibly can and watching documentaries of newer contemporary artists. I realised however that great artists do not learn to paint the way they paint, it is in them, it’s how they feel. Charlie Parker didn’t learn to play like Charlie Parker at any university, it was within.
Its the artists job to show up and paint regardless of how we are feeling. The painting process then reflects the colour of that particular mood. Everything is an inspiration whether negative or positive.
Without Creativity I am nothing. I would dive into a deep depression. I need Art. Art is everything to me.
The Art itself is enough for me. A body of work I can lay down at the end of my life, and say I Was Here.
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