COVER TO CANVAS ARTIST OF THE DAY – Róisín Gartland, Conceptual Artist & Designer

Róisín Gartland is Irelands finest leather couture designer and in her other life as a conceptual artist she strives to break down the barriers between craft, art and design, seeing the creative process as all encompassing. The ‘Cover to Canvas’ project allowed her to combine her knowledge of leather and her skill as an artist/designer to create something unique for the exhibition.

Let us take a look at the thinking behind her piece…

Art Work Title

‘Art and Truth’

I have worked with leather for a long time and I particularly love leather bound books so it’s safe to say then I was in my element in the Law Library. The selection of books to work with was large and quite varied and difficult to choose from but it was while in the basement the little book Art and Truth, JWR Purser 1937, Jackson, presented itself to me. In appearance it was insignificant: a simple blue linen cover with the title impressed in foil, but it was the title itself that appealed to me. So simple! I’m an advocate of Occam’s razor which states “everything should be as simple as it can be, but not simpler”, and in that frame of mind I set about creating covers to illustrate the title. I believe that in search of the truth things should be looked at from all sides and all angles and I tried to illustrate the title ART + TRUTH in such a way as to depict this notion. I scratched away at the surface and turned the letters inside out, upside down and back to front and then impressed them into the skin of the cover.

WANT TO SEE ROISIN’S WORK? COME ALONG TO OUR EXHIBITION. TO LEARN MORE ABOUT ROISIN GARTLAND’S WORK, PLEASE CLICK HERE.