Siobáin, originally from Birmingham, of dual heritage: Irish/English, studied Fine Art in Liverpool, and a Masters in Art & Education in Birmingham. She was an art lecturer for over 20 years in FE & HE, now developing her own creative practice focussing mainly on Print, Collage, Assemblage & Installation alongside community based teaching.
She is an active member of the Gloucestershire Printmaking Coop and the part time Administrator. Siobáin has a strong sense of how things work together and mixed media work is often her main focus. Within this discipline, she collects original imagery, text and objects and combines them with drawing, print, textiles, photographs, paint and stitch.
Drawing is fundamental to her practice and manifests itself in many forms, including print and drawing with a sewing machine.Her work is fuelled by personal experiences of anxiety, culture, intersectional feminism, politics, society and what it is to be human.
Siobáin likes to play with ideas as much as composition & colour – fluro/neon is her current obsession. PLAY is very important in her work and she is informed by theoretical work of Schiller, Kant & Dewey. She considers Printmaking a medium of infinite possibilities, and works with silkscreen methods, mono printing, collographs and etching, often combining disciplines and making unique prints (U/P), she rarely makes editions and therefore most of her prints are ‘one-offs’ or variations.
The passing of time, inspiration from film & music and the ‘overlooked’ are concerns that recur in her work and Siobáin considers it impossible to ignore issues of social & political injustice.
I was once very afraid of using colour, I didn’t want to get it wrong, all of my mixed media works began with a layer of Titanium White or Buff Titanium acrylic.
My early works on paper were complex layer upon layer, pulling back, adding in but always muted and subtle, I think Printmaking and specifically screen printing, brought me to colour. The layering here was different, one colour on top of another colour, just created new ones.
I was able to work in a more spontaneous and creative way, playing with the layering – not being measured and ordered – but being playful and experimenting ‘on the go’ to see what happens.
I love to draw, I see patterns and shapes everywhere, colour brings me joy.
I like order as much as I like disarray.
I like starting something and not finishing it – I like revisiting and reworking.