Chapter the fifth — how it is made
The Process
In her own words, in the order it happened. The slates were a roof, then a stack in a shed, then — twenty years later — somewhere to put the things she noticed.
Where they came from
When I was a kid my mum renovated an old cottage. The slates came off the roof, and then they just sat there for about twenty years.
Starting
During lockdown I started painting on them. I had the time, and there was a stack of them sitting doing nothing.
Working out what suited them
I experimented with a lot of different things first. What I found was that the thing that looked best on the dark slate was natural items — flowers, animals, things like that. They always stood out.
Why it works
They're imperfect and the slates are imperfect too, so they complement each other. It looks natural rather than arranged.
Where the ideas come from
I find my inspiration in the natural things around me, and a lot of those are in Laois.
What is still missing
Photographs of a slate, half painted.
The words here are Victoria's. What the page does not have yet is photographs of a slate part-finished, before the marks get blended. Rather than fill the gap with stock images of somebody else's studio, it says so — and shows the shed where the slates waited instead.