📘 My 20 year art project: 933 Ulysses artworks in the works!

Earlier this week you may have seen on my Instagram stories (or Facebook), this beautiful flower that popped up in my future home's garden. We're still waiting on electricity to continue with the 🏡 renovation… there is only so much you can do with hand tools!! 🛠

 

A surprise gift…

 from the couple who lived and died there. I wonder if they ever pondered what joy their flowers would bring to an Irish woman almost 15 years later.

And these juicy, sweet, little strawberries 🍓 bordering the back fence. The happiness they brought my 3 year old, Wolfie, (once I ate half of each to show there were no ‘stones’ in them 😂 he's used to cherries here!) 

My big Ulysses project will take approximately at least 20 years to complete: 

I'm going to create one artwork per page of Ulysses 📖

My Penguin edition has 933 pages, and according the mathematician in the house, even if I somehow manage to paint one painting per week it'll take 18 years!

 

I'm excited, and terrified… sure I'd be mad if I wasn't!

I've been conjuring this up since I first met the Irish Ambassador, Mr Gargan, for coffee in Budapest five months ago, January 2022.

It made me think a lot of the time I lived in New York 15 years ago, I had a philosopher friend, who asked me, 

‘What are you going to leave behind Natalie, and you can't say a child?’ 

At the time I was too busy working in the famously fickle fashion industry and wondering which Manhattan rooftop bar had my next G&T.

So I suppose, in a way, this project is 15 years and 5 months in the planning. One painting per page, focusing on the colours of course!

I hope you had a lovely Bloomsday 🌷 (16th June)

Wish me good luck!

All my best,
Natalie 👩‍🎨