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Artist Focus: Elaine Peden

One of Elaine’s artworks, ‘willowherb’ is displayed on the title wall as you enter the exhibition, ROOTS, a dialogue in textile and poetry. It is subtle yet impactful in its dyptich form, elongated shape and colour tones. It is the perfect piece to halt the viewer in their tracks, realise on closer inspection that it is a textile artwork, and then move to read about the exhibition which is writ large on either side in Irish and in English.

‘willowherb’ is inspired by Jane Clarke’s poem of the same name. It explores the harsh reality of exiting a hospital leaving a loved one behind and facing the grey, bleak hospital car park. This is a space that Elaine has inhabited many times in the past as a nurse and more recently when her father passed away.

while you were leaving
the wind picked up

and tossed lithe stems
purple-pink flower heads

by the breeze block wall
of the hospital car park ...

willowherb, Jane Clarke

Elaine uses deadstock fabrics, in this instance an old cotton and linen tablecloth which was dyed with Procion dye and Brusho powder mixed with inks, then embroidered flowers were added. It was originally one large piece but Elaine wished to reference the two sides of the story; the person exiting the hospital and the one left behind, so she was brave enough to cut it up and form it into two pieces.

Elaine says she dreams in colour and cobalt blue is her favourite. As she read Jane’s poem ‘Stepping In’ the colour came to the forefront ‘alert, electric, alive‘ to become the base colour of her piece of the same name. As a child Elaine hated the cold water but in the past few years she has returned to the water. This poem perfectly captures the experience of river swimming, awkwardly undressing and clambering down a bank to the ‘bone-cold awakening of skin‘. Elaine believes that on land we thread in shallow waters, exposing little of ourselves to the harsh world but in cold water we can plunge deeper to connect body and inner self.

This hanging was made with wet felt technique using an array of materials: merino wool, Icelandic fibre, mulberry silk, bamboo fibre, dyed wool neps, sari silk and yarn threads. Its colours are indeed electric, alert and alive.

Placed on a low pedestal beneath, is a companion piece ‘Stepping In II‘, inspired by the line ‘lemon-mossed pebbles‘ in the same poem. Elaine believes stones have a grounding effect, their weight in her hand, no hard edges, their stillness bearing witness to their surroundings.

Elaine’s third contribution to the exhibition also references the water. Jane Clarke’s poem ‘Against the Flow’ speaks of the salmon’s journey full of perils and obstacles as it moves upstream to spawn ‘…through riffles and deeps, millraces that churn in spate…’. While creating her piece of the same name, Elaine reflects on her own past life journeys when she began ‘to swim against the current‘, forge her own path, to break free.

‘One day you knew you must turn,

begin to swim against the current,

leave the estuary waters, brackish

with sediment …’

‘Against the flow‘, Jane Clarke

This wall hanging was made using the wet felting technique, Herdwick wool fibre, dyed merino wool, Tussah silk and mulberry silk. A rivulet of text from the poem runs through it.

Thank you to Elaine for sharing her thoughts, to Jane Clarke for her collaboration and to her publisher, Bloodaxe Books, for permission to use her poems. Thanks also to the OPW for the opportunity to exhibit and Kildare County Council for funding through the Arts Act Grant.

To see these works up close and personal, visit the exhibition ROOTS, a dialogue in textile and poetry, in the Coach House Gallery, Dublin Castle. Open 7 days a week, 10 am – 5 pm, closed for lunch 1.15 – 1.45 pm. Some of Jane’s books are now available in the gift shop in Chester Beatty Library next to the Coach House.