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Pauline Flynn is a Visual Artist/Poet. She studied visual art at the Dunlaoghaire School of Art & Design and the National College of Art & Design Dublin, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Kyoto University of Arts. She has worked as a professional artist since 1985 and has exhibited in Ireland, United Kingdom, Japan and China. Her imagery is abstract using Acrylic/Mixed Media.In 2008 she took a break from painting and in 2010 completed an MA in Creative Writing at University College Dublin, where she began to write poetry and was shortlisted for the Patrick Kavanagh Poetry Award the same year. Her work is published in poetry journals including Poetry Ireland Review, the Eavan Boland Special issue in 2023, Skylight, The Waxed Lemon, (Visual Art), Into the Light, The Boyne Berries, and Sixteen. (Irl). Light, a journal of poetry and photography (USA), Orbis, and The Blue Nib (UK), She works and lives in County Wicklow in Ireland and finds painting and writing poetry to be a perfect complement to each other.
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Artist’s Statement
I graduated with a BA in Fine Art Sculpture/History of Art from the National College of Art & Design in Dublin in 1985. 2010 I completed my MA in Creative Writing at University College Dublin. I took a break from visual art to pursue something new and discovered a passion for poetry during my MA studies. Although my friends were not surprised by this, as I often incorporated text into my early artworks, which was an essential part of many of my concepts and artworks, I had never thought of myself as a writer. This revelation made me realise that words have been there from the beginning not just since I started writing poetry. I’ve always considered myself a ‘maker’ and now I found a new medium – words. Additionally, I’ve always loved the tactile experience of holding a book, so making books has been an important aspect of my expression. As I look through my archive for this project with The High Window, it’s heartening to see the evolution in my creative journey. The utilization of diverse media to articulate my ideas reflects an enduring personal core knowledge and innate understanding that has shaped my life and my work.
In this issue of The High Window, I’d like to share some of those early works with you. [PF].
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Handmade Books I and II
These two books are made from paper that consists of moss, leaves and other natural debris, blended into pulp with starch and dried flat.
The text was typed on a manual ‘Imperial’ typewriter. One or more words to each page. I was interested in combining man-made and natural materials.
In the book below one word was repeated over the entire surface of each page
Sleep
Dream
Water
Wonder
Touch
Joy
Light
Fear
In pain
Dark
Handmade pages bound with rusted steel and wing nuts
Those long hot summers
Smelled freshly
Of
Mud
Water
Elderberries
Dandelions
Dock leaves
Nettles
And old clothes
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Photography and Text in Accordion Book
The room
Where she slept
Was all white and grey
Days and nights
Came and went
And nothing changed
Nothing really changed
Everything seemed the same
Everything was the same
Almost
But in between the walls
Who knows
What goes on
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Collage and Text in Accordion Book
I often visit the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin. This library has a marvellous collection of all things Oriental. It was an exhibition of jade books that caught my attention for the bronze pages I made below with illegible text. Bronze can only be destroyed by a furnace. I like the idea of text on a page of something as indestructible as bronze. I also like that the text is secret and private, like love letters perhaps.
Meeting the Qianlong Dynasty
In a vitrine in the Chester Beatty Library
I discover a jade book ── pages
of a carved running script
filled with gold leaf ── a poem
The Song of the Jade Bowl
by the Qianlong Emperor.
Oh, to hold the pages in my hands,
smooth-polished against my skin,
and stroke the grooves where the quartz head
of the carver’s tool exacted the flow
of the emperor’s calligraphy ── poetry.
Take it home as a talisman and put my pen
to paper as if it were a page of jade.
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Love Letters Installation
Objects include a box of love letters written in twenty languages on a steel table draped with a paper scroll. Parts of the letters are also written around the walls. A love chair made from steel with mirror glass mounted on one chair and an image painted on Japanese handmade paper (Washi), on the other. The floor is covered with autumn leaves. There is also a continuous loop tape of the letters being read by their writers.
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Father’s Letters
lay hidden in a wooden box on top
of the golden-figured walnut wardrobe
with other discarded things:
a cane backrest for the sick, a broken
gramophone, a history of style
in rolls of left-over wallpaper.
Inside, a musty odour clung
to the deep layer of crumpled pages.
Nibs dipped in ink, filled sheets
of pale blue and ivory with words.
Letters of requests and questions,
news, love and longing.
Mollie, from the Eye and Ear Hospital
on Adelaide Road, Julia from Dun Laoghaire,
Mary from the Fever Hospital in Carlow,
her passion burning on every page.
And from Newtown Cunningham,
Jenny’s quiet, caring words.
Someone was bound to lift the lid.
A curious wife or a young daughter,
looking for secrets, sentiments
to make her blush, who ironed creases
from each page and tied them together
with a red ribbon ─ a lieu de mémoire.
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The Emerald Green Box
Not knowing what urged me up into the attic’s
piercing cold, I shine the torch over cardboard boxes,
an old hi-fi system, and a small green leather box,
obvious as emeralds. It is soft to the touch,
smells faintly of dates when I open it, your letters,
all written on gampi paper, clear of foxing, smooth.
Familiar in my hand, I lean back against the rafters,
and read every word, to the last page.
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Performance with a slide projection of image and text
Quis his locus, quae
regio, quae mundi plaga?
What place is this, what
region, what quarter of the world?
T.S. Eliot, ‘Marina’
For this performance, I photocopied ten years of my diaries and sewed them together to make a room with one side open to the audience at the Project Arts Centre, Dublin as part of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art 1985. I also printed selected pages onto fabric to make a costume and recited parts of the text. Later I burnt all the diaries and the photocopies.
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These are three of the many accordion books of studies that I made in my studio from slides taken while travelling in China, Venice, Andalucia and elsewhere. I painted walls, doors, and windows, in search of composition, shapes and colour combinations that I could use to make larger abstract works. While mixing these colours I consign them to physical, mental and emotional memory for future use.
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China
Venice
Andalucia
The High Window 