ART What lies beneath
Oil on birch wood panel Courtesy Hillsboro Fine Art PET cats and dogs for Gorey-based, nonconformist artist Amanda Doran became recurring characters in her work but when Ghost arrived on the scene six months ago, from who knows where, he was a whole new kind of cat. “Very skittish, scary-looking, deaf and afraid of people. What strikes me most is the relationship my partner Nigel has with Ghost”. Nigel Holohan, an artist also, won him over. “They are similar characters, lone wolves and Nigel’s bond with the cat is endearing.” Holohan named him Ghost “because when Nigel would go about his daily routines the cat would always appear soundlessly, ghost-like. Ghost has a very masculine energy and a strong, macho bond with Nigel.”
Doran doesn’t smoke but Ghost hangs around the staff smoking area at the family business in Gorey. Snapping him one day by an ashtray, “I thought, of course I’ll make it look like he’s smoking. It’s a prop that helps build the character, a fun exaggeration and Ghost is a bad ass and all bad asses smoke”. But the spiralling, swirling smoke also “highlights the black/white contrast. A white cat is innocence, purity; smoking is death, decay”. Ghost, present in a painterly, sensuous way, stares us down, disapprovingly. Cat malogen.
This quirky, playful painting is on birch wood panel. “I love the colour and feel of it and knew straight away whatever would be painted on it would have to work with the natural wood — the whiteness of the Ghost, the sickly yellow seating in the background, the greys and blacks of the ashtray.” She also knew that “the slick greasiness of the oil would look great on the bare wood and that it would seep into the untreated panel like a good bag of fresh chips!”
For Amanda Doran, painting’s a hypnotic process. An only child, shy and introverted, a big day dreamer, growing up Doran always painted figuratively and was always interested in sub- and alternative culture. She worked tirelessly, “going for it, all guns blazing, devoured it all, painting, drawing, collage, sculpture. I loved observing and reimagining the interests, habits and relationships in the lives of others.” Her uncle, artist Paul Doran, always drawing and painting, meant “this was a normal form of language for me” and he introduced her to the great painting masters. She also thinks social media crucial. “I think we should embrace it, interact and have fun with it. Sure, it’s an art form in itself.”