Clonmel artist is leaving her mark on the world around her

Artist Annie Hogg leads the way to her studio, walking barefoot through the grass, her dog Archy at her heels, skirting the rescue hens and the lone cockerel who was dropped over her wall one winter’s night. 

Her steps fall lightly leaving barely a trace. Similarly, her black-cladded building nestles imperceptibly into the sylvan glade she calls home, tucked away in a secluded corner of Marlfield, on the outskirts of Clonmel. 

Four generations of Annie’s family have lived in this neighbourhood but even so, she was surprised at the strong sense of belonging she felt on her return in 2021 after over twenty years away. 

CONNECTION TO PLACE

This sense of connection to place is something that features hugely in both her approach to her art and in the pieces she creates. Annie’s bijou studio exudes calm and a sense of space. 

Classical music plays softly in the background and, surprisingly, there is an absence of any distinct odours, no smell of paints or turps, just a hint of verdure on the gentle breeze coming through the long window that doubles as Archy’s personal right of way.

Annie describes herself as a visual artist, a mark maker. “When I’m trying to tell a story, I see the world in pictures, that’s basically what I’m trying to put down on paper.” 

While many of her previous pieces are two-dimensional, she now finds herself increasingly drawn towards three-dimensional art forms. 

In effect, she is returning to sculpture, in which she majored for her Art degree. Having first studied in the Crawford College of Art and Design, she subsequently graduated in 2002 with a BA Fine Art from the Aki Academy of Art and Design in the Netherlands.

 CAMPAIGNING

The next decade saw Annie leave the art world to become actively involved in environmental campaigning across Europe and Oceania. 

Those experiences, she feels, inform her commitment to ‘stepping lightly’ in the world around her, continuing the fight to protect the hedgerows and precious natural resources. It has also left her with a stark awareness of the imminent threat of what she terms ‘climate chaos.’ 

She doesn’t hold out much hope for the future, believing that the vested interests of the Western world preclude meaningful change.

However, while you may take the woman out of the art world, it seems you can’t take the art world out of the woman. Five years ago, with characteristic determination, Annie decided it was time to return full-time to life as an artist. She explains it in her own inimitable way.

live well

“I decided I want to die well. In my opinion that’s all you can do. And to die well you have to live well,” she says. “At that stage I threw caution to the wind and thought “Right this is what I’m going to do. I’m not allowing myself a plan B.”

 In her artistic practice, Annie creates her own inks and paints from minerals, soils and ochres discovered when she goes foraging. The implements she uses are equally individual: wild animal bones, tool fragments, charred objects. 

LOVELY RUSTY NAILS

‘Lovely Rusty Nails,’ proclaims one label among the many ordered rows of jars and boxes containing pigments, soils, and objet trouvés that comprise the tools of her trade. 

The careful way she handles these things reflects the reverence with which she approaches all the bounty nature has afforded her. 

“When you’re foraging, you follow the forager’s rule of only taking one third, you only take what you need, when you need it, and you use it with respect,” said Annie. 

Annie sees her art as a continuum of a practice that stretches across the centuries to the first cave drawings that also featured charcoal and ochres. 

CELTIC CALENDER

Similarly, it connects to the ancient Irish manuscripts illuminated with plant-based inks. Annie’s process is also attuned to the Celtic calendar and the major festivals such as Lúnasa and Samhain.

 “I do a lot of my charring on the night of Bealtaine,” she says.

 “It’s also integral to my practice to go out foraging on significant dates, keeping an eye on the seasons,” explained Annie.

Annie dismisses out of hand any suggestion that she is creating her own creative niche.

 “No, I’m not, there are an awful lot of people doing this all over the world. It exploded in the last five years, particularly during the pandemic. I think this creation of materials from the environment is a natural progression, especially for me,” said Annie.

Throughout the interview, Annie is warm and convivial, answering questions with humour and grace, words flowing at will. 

However, when I ask her if being a woman is important to her practice, she pauses for quite a long time before answering.

 “Oh gosh, I’ve never thought about it.” Annie pauses again. “I love being female, I love being feminine. I suppose I don’t know what other way there is to be in the world other than as a female, so I just accept it. I do remember being told as a youngster that girls couldn’t do certain things, but that just made me even more determined to do them.” 

ALONE 

While Annie used modern technology during Covid-19 to connect with her tribe online and acknowledges it as a necessary lifeline at that time, she is uncompromising about her need to be alone. 

“I’m very insular,” she says. “I like to work on my own, in my own space. This is my exploration of being alive at this current moment in time, in this place, on this planet. It’s my chance to speak, to have my voice heard.” 

As to the intended audience, Annie is equally direct. 

“The world, anybody who wants to listen,” she says.

ACT OF CREATIVITY 

One gets the impression that what matters most to her is the act of creativity itself. 

“The concepts of structure and balance in a visual composition are of huge importance to me. Everything I do is very considered and the visual result is as important as the materials used. I am constantly working on that, constantly looking at the work of artists I admire, observing their technique, their compositions, the balance and structure within their work, their use of and placement of colour,” said Annie.

Members of Tipperary Comhairle na nÓg gather at Croke Park to celebrate the national showcase

Annie is currently preparing for a trip to Allihies, county Cork, to prepare for her upcoming exhibition there in October 2022. 

It will be a homecoming of sorts, as she lived there before returning to her native Tipperary. On arrival, she will begin with a formal ritual of her own devising in a reconstructed beehive hut. 

Then the foraging will begin to find the materials she needs, plants, soils, lichens, even water. Annie believes this is a vital part of her artistic process, forming a connection with the elemental spirit of the place she wishes to celebrate in her work.

 She’s not quite sure what will happen when she brings those finds back to her Tipperary studio but that, for her, is all part of the creative endeavour. 

Annie draws her inspiration from many sources, the landscape itself, the ancient monuments of the region, the Irish language and the words of poets such as Seamus Heaney and John Moriarty. 

INSPIRATION

The history of the Beara peninsula and its links to the story of the Cailleach will undoubtedly serve as inspiration for this as-yet unnamed exhibition. The name for the exhibition like the artistic process itself will unfold, Annie says, in due time.

“The Red Hag, her incarnation as Maiden, Mother and Crone, that whole female trinity, that cycle of life, the life of every woman, will definitely figure in this work. I’d like to explore the duality of the Cailleach, the fact that she is gentle and nurturing but can also be fierce and unforgiving, just like the environment here on Beara. She’s not the stereotypical feminine figure. I suppose she’s the personification of the landscape and the feelings it evokes. Maybe I’ll also do something around menopause because it really interests me,” said Annie.

I find it fascinating that while Annie as an artist lives for the most part in a world of her own devising yet her major concerns of the moment - climate change, conserving the environment, the menopause - are very much part of the national zeitgeist right now.

 BEAUTIFUL OBJECT

Just before I leave, I notice a single glass implement, a muller, an intrinsically beautiful object, sitting on Annie’s work table. In answer to my questions, she gives a leisurely demonstration of how it works, the circular motion she employs producing ever larger circles of pigmented colour, an earthy rust brown, on cream parchment. It is simply beautiful. 

Annie describes herself as a mark maker and undoubtedly, she leaves a singular mark on the world around her.

Two books, Artisans of Clonmel and Artisans of Cashel, were published before Christmas.
They were launched as part of Clonmel Applefest and the Cashel Arts Festival. They both carry the stories of craftspeople in the community.
Over the coming months The Nationalist will carry stories from both books.
The article for this week was written by Mary Hanrahan.
Mary Hanrahan hails from Fetharc. She has had a life-long love affair with words, written, spoken, performed. A poet by default, she also writes short stories and is currently working on a memoir. Her stated ambition is to ‘dance the pen upon the page’.