在北京的愛爾蘭藝術家

By Tracie Barrett

在北京的愛爾蘭藝術家

Irish Artist in Beijing

By Tracie Barrett

愛爾蘭藝術家尼亞芙·坎寧安以編織和繪畫的方式，把她的私人物品和周遭事物都融入進了她的藝術作品里。

走進尼亞芙·坎寧安位于北京的公寓，首先映入眼簾的是那滿墻的油畫。進一步研究便會發現，這些畫風格各異，主題豐富，不管遠觀還是近看都讓人印象深刻——由深紅和黑色輪廓構成的是以地鐵為主題的一組油畫，一幅巨大的山景圖上用厚涂顏料繪出了崎嶇的峭壁，還有一幅幅肖像畫的線條柔和得就像快融化了一樣，這些肖像畫的靈感來自中國當代藝術家張德龍的作品。

不過，這位出生在都柏林的藝術家的創作并不局限于油畫。走進她的工作室或登錄她的網站，你會看到一個用她自己的頭發編成的精致頭骨。還有一個編織的螺旋柱，看上去比頭骨更結實，它的作用相當于日歷，它既記錄世界上發生的大事，也記錄個人成長的小事。一談起她待過的國家，旅行過的地方，還有自己是怎么成為藝術家時，坎寧安那溫和的愛爾蘭口音便會交織出時而飄渺時而具體的畫面，這些話語本身就像藝術品一樣。

From knitting to painting, Irish artist weaves her heritage and surroundings into her art, as Tracie Barrett discovers.

The first thing one notices on entering the Beijing apartment of artist Niamh Cunningham is the number of canvases covering almost every inch of wall space. A closer look shows an equally impressive variety of styles and subject matter - the dark reds and black silhouettes of her subway series, thickly applied impasto oils that form rugged crags on a huge mountains cape, and the soft, seemingly melting lines of her Transparent Milk portraits, inspired by the work of the contemporary Chinese artist Zhang Delong.

Nor does the Dublin-born artist limit herself to working on canvas. Stepping into her studio or browsing her website, one can see a delicate knitted skull spun from her own hair and a more solid knitted spiral that serves as a calendar, both public and very personal. Cunningham’s speech is an artwork of its own, her soft Irish brogue weaving ethereal and elemental images, as she speaks of the countries in which she has lived and traveled and her evolution as an artist.

Surprisingly, or perhaps not when one sees the detail in her work, Cunningham studied biomedical sciences at university and has both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in the field. Art has always been part of her life, however, learned first from her mother and grandmother and honed through practice and experimentation.

“My gran was a painter,” she says, “So she gave me my first oils when I was 11. My mother used to make marmalade from real oranges and when the crates of oranges came, there was a canvas board on the crates.”

Her grandmother, a “hobbyist” painter, taught her how to prime the boards and they were her first canvases.

令人驚訝的是，坎寧安在大學讀的是生物醫學，并且拿到了生物醫學的本科和碩士學位，這也許可以從她的作品細節中看出。藝術一直是她生活的一部分。然而，她最初是從母親和祖母那里學來的，后來，通過反復實踐和嘗試，她變得越來越得心應手。

“我的祖母是個畫家。”坎寧安說，“我11歲的時候，她第一次給了我油畫顏料。我母親原來是做橘子醬的，每次有成箱的橘子運來，箱子上都會蓋著一塊帆布板。”

坎寧安的祖母是一個“嗜畫成癮”的畫家，她教會了坎寧安如何利用這些帆布板，這些板成了她最早的油畫板。

在坎寧安專心于生物醫學期間，藝術被她丟在了一邊。一開始在英國，她與她現在的丈夫相遇。后來她去了南非的約翰內斯堡，在當地的一所學院教授醫學實驗科學。在那里，她跟藝術系的老師們建立了友誼，并借此機會再次開始嘗試自己的藝術創作，她說她總是會把丙烯酸顏料畫和南非聯系起來。

一個地方與藝術作品之間的聯系，是坎寧安變化多樣的作品里永恒的主題，她說自己的藝術作品是自己對置身之地的“明確回應”。

離開南非之后，她在香港待了7年，于1991年生下了兒子芬恩（Fionn），此后她又去東京呆了3年。后來，全家搬到迪拜住了5年。坎寧安說，迪拜是她的“最初作品的題材來源”。

一家人住得離迪拜河不遠，她幾乎每天都帶著兒子去河邊散步，潺潺的河水成了她迪拜風光畫的主題。

她說：“就是在那時候，我意識到自己應該成為一名認真專一的畫家，至少，我意識到我該放下我的教學工作了。”

她在迪拜舉辦了兩次個人展覽，然后一家人回到愛爾蘭，在那兒待了一年。這樣芬恩便可以體驗那里的生活，“知道他是愛爾蘭人”。從那個時期起她的作品便開始描繪祖國的大好河山。

接下來的一年是在布拉格度過的，在那里她創作了一系列風景圖，描繪著這座歷史名城里的屋頂和橋梁。然后，大約6年前，全家人搬到了北京，在這里，坎寧安再次開始描繪美麗的風景，也找回了童年在紡織品上繪圖的激情。

她說：“我在讀小學的時候，只有一件事讓我覺得超級自信，也只有這件事讓我覺得我比學校的任何人都強，那就是編織。這是母親遺傳給我的東西之一。”

她說她“大量想法”的靈感都來自于北京，包括描繪城市公共交通和自行車這一“慢速芭蕾”的作品系列，大大小小的車子擁擠在一起“像一群蜜蜂或其他什么昆蟲”。

她說：“我認為，如果你有機會為一個展覽創作一些新作品，這能很自然地把你推向一個未知領域。”

Art fell by the wayside as she pursued a career in the medical field, first in England where she met her husband and then in Johannesburg, South Africa, where she taught Medical Lab Sciences at a local college. There, through friendships she made with staff in the art department, she started experimenting with her own art again and she says she will always associate South Africa with acrylics.

The connection between place and artwork is a constant in her diverse body of work, as she says her art is “definitely a response” to where she is.

Her time in South Africa was followed by seven years in Hong Kong, where her son Fionn was born in 1999, and three in Tokyo. The family then moved to Dubai for five years, and Cunningham said that is where her “first main body of work came”.

The family lived close to the Dubai Creek and she took Fionn walking there almost every day, its rippling waters becoming the lifeblood of her Dubai cityscapes.

“That’s when I knew I would be a very serious painter, or at least I knew I would have to drop my teaching.” she says.

She had two solo shows while in Dubai, then the family returned to Ireland for a year, so Fionn could experience living there and “know he was Irish”. Her work from that period portrays the rich emerald beauty of her homeland.

The next year was spent in Prague, resulting in another series of landscapes, featuring the rooftops and bridges of the historic city. Then, almost six years ago, the family relocated to Beijing, where Cunningham has again painted stunning landscapes, but also returned to a childhood passion for working with textiles.

“When I was in primary school, the only thing I felt super confident in doing, the only thing I was better at than anyone else in school was knitting and sewing,” she says, “It was one of the legacies my mother handed to me.”

She says she has “loads of ideas” inspired by Beijing, including a series about the city’s public transport and the “slow ballet” of bicycles - “almost like a swarm of bees or insects”.

“I think if you have an opportunity to make new work for an exhibition, it’s natural to push yourself into unknown directions.” she says.