THE FOUR SEASONS
West Cork Creates exhibition 2023
“ The theme for West Cork Creates Summer Exhibition 2023 is ‘The Four Seasons’. This is a broad theme that can be freely interpreted and gives scope for artists to respond in ways that are specific to their practice. It could refer to customs, lore and legends of the Irish landscape, seasonal changes/colour, rituals of celebration honouring the seasons eg. Winter Soltice, Samhain, Imbolc, Bealtaine and Lughnasa, agricultural activities such as the harvesting of crops or inspiration from Vivaldi’s violin concerti of the same name”
west cork creates.com
The Four Seasons
When I think about The Four Seasons, I think about life, cycles and the intertwined effects time has on the physical and the metaphysical. Whether it be in outter space or in our most inner space, it has been prooven that every cause has an effect. With this in mind I can’t help but wonder about the cyclical nature of the seasons and the parallel nature of life, environment, the stuff of life. Then, I wonder a little more and it causes me to interpret, perhaps guided by its influence, what it is I do, what it is that draws me to engage with it, what it is that lies beneath what I see, and what it is that I look for in the first place?
Previously through my work, I have questioned and examined qualities of fallibility and indelibility, both in the subject matter and also in the materials I choose to use. Once more I find myself lost in a thicket of significant meaning, looking, caught in the wire of nostalgia, where the landscape simply has the indelible, although at times, the faintest, footprint impressed onto its surface.
The traces that I seek are current or historic are seasonal or daily, a hint caught in one or more of The Four Seasons which can at times be something magic lying within the mundane.
Johanna Connor 2023