Christie Taylor sets up paint along the Irish coastline during a residency there last year. Work from Taylor will be featured at Bishop’s Stock Fine Art, Craft & Wine in Snow Hill during First Friday Weekend, this week.

By Josh Davis, Associate Editor

(March 1, 2018) Work from Christie Taylor’s five-week fellowship in Ballycastle, Ireland will be shown at Bishop’s Stock Fine Art, Craft & Wine in Snow Hill this Friday and Saturday, during the First Friday Weekend art stroll.

Nonprofit Ballinglen Arts Foundation awarded the fellowship to Taylor, who was in Ireland from Nov. 8 through Dec. 17.

“It was excellent,” she said. “It was so nice just to plant myself in another environment that was beautiful and full of wonderful people. I just had a blast.

“There’s something about having the freedom to do what you want to all day,” Taylor added. “I’d go out and I’d paint, and then I’d come home and I would drink beer. That was my life!”

She said the small and picturesque village sits on the northern tip of the Republic of Ireland, bordering the Atlantic Ocean and about two kilometers away from a bay.

“They told me they had 17 pubs at one time – now they’re down to three,” she said. “The Ballinglen Arts Foundation picked this area because they wanted artists to paint in rural Ireland, so you have a very small town and all around you have sheep farmers. And then the ocean is right there, so you have watermen as well.”

Studies by artist Christie Taylor show the breadth of her work while overseas in Ballycastle, Ireland. Taylor will display several pieces from the recent trip during First Friday weekend in Snow Hill.

Nearby is the town of Downpatrick, which has a “head,” or cliff that goes out into the water, Taylor said.

“During the 1300s, part of it separated [from that land], so it sits out there and is called ‘a stack,’” Taylor said. “It’s a place people will come to see, so the town has these really beautiful, natural sites.”

While there, Taylor also took advantage of a program called the Wild Atlantic Way, which maps out 2,500 kilometers of road along the Atlantic coastline.

“They’ve got it all designated, all these places you can just drive and see these amazing views,” she said. “That’s how I spent a lot of my time – I’d just get in the car and go somewhere and spend the night, and sketch and paint along the way. It was really, really special.”

Taylor said she did sketches and studies, both types of drawings, each day, creating perhaps 60 finished pieces of art in five weeks.

She was especially struck by the dramatic skies in coastal Ireland, going so far as to change the aspect of her canvas from four-by-six inches, to six-inch squares to capture a broader view.

“The sky had to be a part of the landscape,” she said. “It’s like living in a snow globe without the snow – you feel like you’re encompassed in the sky.

“It’s not like the landscape here, where it feels horizontal,” Taylor continued. “Because the weather coming off the ocean changes all day long, it would be raining or hailing and then the sun comes out. The joke over there is you have four seasons in a day and you can feel that so much. It was really exciting to work in that environment … and it really was a great challenge for a painter to have that changing on you all the time.”

Several of Taylor’s new works will be on display during an opening reception from 5-8 p.m. at Bishop’s Stock on Friday. The gallery will also be open and showing work on Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Along with Taylor, printmaker Erick Sahler will display his newest serigraphs during the exhibition “New Work by Gallery Artists.”

“My goal [in Ireland] was to capture the energy of where that edge is, where the land meets the sea,” Taylor said. “I think of myself as sort of responsive, like a jazz player, so the water would come in and make the first beat and I would respond. My hope is when people look at this that they can feel the presence of being there too.”

Taylor kept a blog of writings and images from her trip. To view it, visit www.christietaylorpaintings.com/ireland-2017.

For more information on Bishop’s Stock, visit www.bishopsstock.com.