December - Week 4

Written 29/01/2025

Final piece!

Brigid's Crosses

Acrylic painting of four women dressed in green stood in front of a fire. Their white arms are stretched out to form St. Brigid's cross and their wrists have green straw tied around them. The fire has many pairs of eyes staring from it.

The theme

The strength and defiance of Irish women (and women in general) against oppression.

Thoughts on the process

The process was... fine I guess? I feel like I sort of chipped bit by bit at this painting. One thing I regret is getting an A2 sized canvas rather than one that's more square. Since to fill the space the cross is very lopsided (long up and down, small left and right). I am quite used to acrylic painting so that aspect was fine. One thing that helped was that my art teacher had a bunch of acrylic paint going spare and one shade she had was 'Rose Pink Blush' which actually was much peachy in hue which made getting the right colour for the women's skin a LOT easier than if I had to mix the right blend of red, yellow and white! One other thing is that the white needed a few layers before looking 'right', I even bought another tube of white acrylic pint (my old one was almost done anyway, I didn't use that much paint!)

I was originally going to have various Celtic patterns in their dresses but the Triquetra was the only one I could manage to paint and look coherent XD (and dots I guess)

The progression of this piece can be seenHERE

Comparison with inspiration

Acrylic painting of four women dressed in green stood in front of a fire. Their white arms are stretched out to form St. Brigid's cross and their wrists have green straw tied around them. The fire has many pairs of eyes staring from it.
A stylised painting of a group of women in colourful niqabs holding a hand up, the hands are patterned like the Hamsa. The background is black, and although the women's eyes are open their eyes are black voids.

Honestly, I am actually pretty happy with how mine looks in comparison to Laila Shawa's original! It definitely looks like it is inspired by her painting while being its own thing, more than any other piece I've worked on I think I struck a good balance on that end. My main issue with my painting is that I feel like my brushstrokes are far more obvious whereas she has managed to make hers more or less invisible to the naked eye. This is in part due to me probably painting less layers than she did.

I must admit, I do wonder if part of my more positive feelings is the relief of being DONE and being able to put this behind me.