Dawn Killean

Fine Art BA (Hons)

Photographer, painter, writer, bookbinder inspired by experiences of the world, connects strongly with memory, traces of things gone by, of people & landscape.

About

Dawn Killean

No-one knows that I carry an entire landscape around that no-one else can see or detect.

The Japanese artist, sculptor and writer, Isamu Noguchi states  “We are the landscape of all we have seen”.

The landscape I carry is a personal narrative of the lived experiences of absences accumulated over a lifetime. In reality, it is a non-place, but it is a landscape that I visit and walk through often and for me it is a place of great beauty, solace and sadness.

In this work, I explore the problem of the absent bodily form and whilst I am not searching for any answers, perhaps answers can be found through the relationship we have with nature.

The beginning of my process is storytelling, in the form of poetry or short essay. My vignettes help me get to the essence of my experiences of absence. Walking often, in the wilds of nature aids my immersion into the writing process deepening the connections between memory and the present. The use of personal storytelling aids what I want to say in writing. By using words as a method of sculpting or painting in the imagination I express what I cannot say by drawing, photography or painting and I paint or use other mixed media where I cannot express what I want to portray in words.

The Last Garden

Window

The Last Garden

When your illness came, it crept in so quietly that it was not noticed like the shadow of a cat on a garden wall, hunting down a small bird. Neither saw it coming.

And now you awake every morning to a piss yellow sun, seeping through a cloudy white sky, radiating out to the edges but it is a cold comfort.

I strip the sky and wash out the sun.

Sometimes life seems so really unreal real.

We hide behind the convenient lie that the hot water bottle leaked in the night.

Arm in arm we walk out into the garden. It is in the middle of July and the heat shimmers and charms, lifts and drifts the red admirals that dance along a skyline of Cerulean blue. We stop and start along the path taking in the sea of many beautiful flowers that you have planted over the years.

The heady smell of a thousand perfumed petals makes you smile.

You hold the peg bag and hand them to me one by one. The large white sheet pegged by its corners to the washing line catches the breeze. It billows out with a sudden rush of air. At that moment I dearly wished that I could sail you away and steer you out of the stormy grey to the quiet waters before.

But instead, I brought you flowers from your garden till the day you died.

The book is a last record of Ann’s garden as both Ann and her garden of flowers are now absent.

The Last Garden
Image of a book cover with grey linen cover and with a copper inlay detailing a flower also showing the title, The Last Garden.
Image close-up of the copper inlay detailing a flower.
Image close-up of writing on brown paper inside the book.
Image of ferns inside a circle of brown paper.
Image of a flower in Black and white.

Earlier progressions and connected pieces

Portrait of Ann as a teenager.

Charcoal study of Ann as a teenager in black and white on toned paper.

A label hanging by a piece of string from a nail.

‘Summer of lasts’, a label made from coffee filter paper and coloured with the extracted chemicals of the last Ann’s apple tree leaves having gone through a process of chromatography to record them.

Two images on a wall, one with hands dropping seeds and a lily flowerhead, the other a piece of cloth with seeds and hydrangea flower heads.

The photographic image of hands on the left was created using a cyanotype process. The seeds are honesty seeds and the dropping of the seeds are influenced by the Mexican culture and the Day of the dead. In the Mexican culture it is believed that dropping a trail of marigold flowers from the dead persons home to the graveyard means the loved one can always find their way home. I have used honesty seeds to lay a trail and hand carved a lily into the photograph as it is traditionally used in this country at funerals. The second photographic image was also created using a cyanotype process. The seeds are honesty seeds and the flowers are hydrangea, these are known to symbolise gratitude and thanksgiving to someone special to you. The seeds are scattered and there is a small honesty leaf that has an image on it of Ann’s cottage, also created by a cyanotype process.

A painting of pair of hands on an embroidered cloth.

A painting of Ann’s hands in pastel on a background detailing an embroidered cloth painted in acrylic and highlighted with graphite pencil and patterned stencil.

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