Rory Draper, Portrait Artist
I am an Irish artist, born in Dublin and practicing in Wexford. I use mixed media, on paper or board, to explore the world around me. Drawing with a red and blue pencil to get a sense of my composition and the tones involved; from there I flip from painting with watercolour to drawing with either ink pencils, paint pens or markers to painting again. My goal is to build layers of colour and tone and detailed line to create my over all image. Through my art I can slow the speeding world around me and focus on a moment and unfold it on my page, explore it through my paint strokes and pencil scratches .
As a former Art Teacher I see creativity as a tool to explore what you are capable of, learning and challenging your skills. Art is also a tool to explore oneself in the safety of your home, studio or classroom.
In my current series ‘Breaking the Bubble’ I am exploring the small actions I do during the day or week that help me get out of that depressive bubble you can get in. It can be both mentally or physically, in my case it’s my bedroom.
Being aware of these small things and how useful they can be, became very useful in lockdown. It was during that time I started to explore them visually. Looking at these tiny seemingly insignificant acts or moments of appreciation and composing them on a page and accentuate the colour. The intention is to make these small things bright and shiny, to show that these small actions and appreciations can get you out of a bubble of inactivity, darkness, and depression .
I have been homaging these moments in this series, making them beautiful and striking to give an insight to the viewer how important they are to me. That’s why I use colour and play around with perspective so as to draw in the audience and let the instance sit with them for a while.
I was fortunate to be able to partake in season 8 of ‘Portrait artist of the year’ where I painted and drew the actress Sophie Cookson. We had four hours to accomplish a portrait of our sitter. I was quite happy with the end results.
Contact Rory to commission a portrait
Artist in Residence
In October 2021 I became the artist in residence for the Presentation Arts Centre in Enniscorthy, further exploring ‘Breaking the Bubble’ out side of my house .
My exhibition of work in 'Breaking the Bubble' ran at the Presentation Arts Centre in conjunction with First Fortnight, the European Mental Health Festival from 15th January - 26th February 2022. Visit www.presentationcentre.ie for more info please check my ‘Breaking the Bubble ‘ page here found on the scroll bar above . I am continuing my residence with the Presentation Art Center till October 2022. I am open to studio visits with fair warning .
