Moving house leads to new perspectives
Moving house is high on the list of traumatic experiences for most of us. Not for Bernadette
Madden. The financial crash meant “everything stopped, a full year of commissions was cancelled”. Asset rich but cash poor, selling her house was the solution. “Once I’d made the decision, moving house was surprisingly easy”, and the downsizing, from Dublin 4 to Dublin 3, inspired her latest show New House/ New Home.
As a child, Madden had “no obvious direct connections with art but I was taken to the National Gallery. We went to the Watercolour Society Exhibitions, the Evie Hone in UCD in 1958. I still have the poster for that show which my mother bought me.”
At school, Madden had to choose between Latin and Art, and Latin being a requirement for university at the time, she went for that. But the rules changed and, during her final two years, she took art classes in and outside school, won some prizes, including top prize in Caltex, now Texaco Children’s Art Competition, and thinking, “I could make a living from making art”, opted to go to the National College of Art and Design.
“The emphasis was on technique. I got a very good grounding in oils, watercolour, though I was never entirely comfortable with any of the mediums on offer. When we had to learn crafts, I chose textiles. Ann Bourke, an inspiring teacher, loved batik and once I tried it, I knew I’d found my medium. This did not go well with Maurice MacGonigal, Head of School of Painting who, in 1968, when I told him I had won the Navan Carpets Design Scholarship, commented that no student of his should ever have anything to do with design.” Still a student, she sold her batiks through Craftsman Ltd, owned by Hope Sisk, and “I really got to know the batik medium through constant practice and to like it more and more.”
Madden has also mastered screen printing. Both techniques “resist methods. With batik, Javanese for ‘painted’, I use molten wax as a resist. In my screen prints, I use a readymade screen block.” With batik, “I am used to thinking backwards, not just applying colour but keeping
some of the colour that’s already there.”
Beyond the studio, Madden has played an impor
tant role in Irish art. She built a collection for AXA Insurance over 20 years. She also served on the Cultural Relations Committee in the Department of Foreign Affairs and “a Bernadette Madden” was presented to two popes: then President McAleese chose her St John batik for John Paul II, while then Taoiseach Bertie Ahern presented a St Benedict wall hanging to Pope Benedict.
Madden’s new exhibition features city trees, green spaces, a jug, a dresser, a window. “Covid-19 meant I got to know Fairview Park. I walk there for exercise. I’ve always loved looking out from a height and my new home has an attic with a big window and a great view over the city. I can see
trains flashing by between the buildings opposite.”
Window Box, pictured, is a bright, cheerful screenprint on Artistico paper. “An old friend and I were supermarket shopping not long after I moved. He picked up a packet of narcissus bulbs so I would have something to grow in the new house. They are coming up now for the third year. A sure sign of spring. I put in the purple primulas because I liked the yellow, purple, green combination. The reflection in the window is of the school opposite.”
And now she herself is very much at home.
An old friend and I were supermarket shopping not long after I moved. He picked up narcissus bulbs so I would have something to grow