AISLING ROCK
Artist | Teacher | Researcher
“Ignited Spirit” Series 2023
I am mix media artist who uses painting to explore healing from trauma through nature. My Third year creative process is influenced by my farming background and focusing on the concepts of rituals, traditions, natural resources and childhood. Interested in the extensive folk tradition of rituals and crafting with hay, straw and rushes through creating wearable sculptural pieces of straw hats inspired by the Wren Boy Tradition. Through my Leitrim family connections, the love of folk music passed onto me and celebrated the Wren Boy tradition at Christmas. Incorporating the mask tradition and playing with the notion this is barrier to the viewer of the unidentified face. From this work aroused photo stills portraying snapshots frozen movement in time through medium of oil paint. To capture the overall essence of this revival of these traditions and incorporating my modern-day view of them.
Dancing in Shanakyle, 2023.
Performance art is “about joy, about making something that is so full of kind of a wild joy that you really cannot put into words”- (Anderson, 1992).
Music | Dance | Spoken Word | Film
I am interested in process than in product. Processes are always changing, like stages of healing from trauma. Performance in my opinion is process in the making, in the here and now of the situation. This art work combines painting, portraiture, sculpture, textiles, photography, and video installation. My aim is to increase ones self-esteem and develop personal values through the creation of self and culturally relevant images. A result creating a performance piece using natural materials inspired by important cultural elements to the individual. Incorporating the mask tradition and playing with the notion this is barrier to the viewer of the unidentified face. I am focusing on how this anonymity allows the performer to be free and in a child's mind state. This hidden playful and devilish movement of traditional folk dance and music is fused into performance art.