From Thursday the 18th of Jan 2024 to Nov 23rd 2024, O’Brien drew dance, communal gatherings, and the climate around us, particularly in the three Limerick communities of Moyross, Croom, and Limerick City Centre.
This was Dance Limerick’s DL.BRIDGE Climate Action Project: ‘Creating a Climate for Change in Limerick’, funded by Creative Ireland, as one of their 24 Spark Creative Climate Action Fund II projects.
This initiative, based at Dance Limerick, brought together an artist team, a climate research team, and community groups in Moyross and Croom, focusing on engaging people over 60 in climate action through the arts.
The group of creatives held numerous public workshops with the public across these three communities. Dance Limerick are currently publishing a book on the project featuring O’Briens drawings, and have a collection of his drawings in their permanent collection as a resource for the public to engage with in their open library in development.
One of the points of discussion which stood out during this period was the power of the statement, or reminder, that we are not just connecting with nature, but are nature, not some separate entities desperately trying to connect with something foreign from us.
The tone and attitude we approach the topic of caring for ourselves, our planet and for each other is critical to the impact any creative work that addresses these topics can have. O’Brien is now looking forward in 2025, to how his work is developing with this in mind.
Here are some of his thoughts:
My drawing practice over the years has been both figurative and abstract;
The figurative increasingly embracing an intuitive ‘abstract-figurative’ approach, which I have come to realise holds a deep meaning of realising and experiencing a truer sense of self, beyond surface appearances;
and the abstract embodying a sense of something deeper than the material world we know, yet still containing that material world.
I noticed in 2024, that the latter work has a lot in common with the drawings I do of nature forms. What a wonderful coincidence, that when I draw with complete intuition, reflecting only on the endless possibilities within the totality of existence, the patterns and sense of movement that emerges is not far off the nature forms we have been blessed with in this finite world.
Also worth noting regarding this work, is a profound experience I had which most likely influences these drawings without me needing to even recall it, was a a lucid dream I had around 2019. It was an experience that showed me something that was already within me.
It was the most profound dream I have ever had. Before I fell asleep, I consciously decided, and asked (who Im asking is perhaps a topic for another day!) for a lucid dream that would reveal something to me, about myself…
I had been listening to an audiobook on lucid dreaming for several weeks at that stage, and in line with the authors advice, I had primed my attention for receiving the lucid dreaming experience.
It worked! I became fully aware in the dream. To my surprise, it was far more impressive than I had expected. There was what I can only attempt to describe as an endless presence of energy that was manifesting as multiple forms in rapid succession all around me, like some magnificently beautiful fabric of existence that was never static, vibrantly bursting with endless life.
From this energy, a ship in sea water formed, emerging from my left, me now being on a dock (Everything still being made of the same spontaneously transforming life ‘fabric’). The ship said ‘MYSTIC’ on it, and I knew in that moment that was the message for me, about myself. Honestly, I questioned it. I thought, Mystic? Im an artist. Im not some kind of yogi…
The impact of the heaven-like dimension I had experienced was powerful, but the message hadn’t seemed to quite click with my preconceived notions about the word mystic. Instead of dismissing it based on prior notions about it, I googled it and found that it meant:
‘A person who seeks by contemplation and self-surrender to obtain unity with or absorption into the Deity or the absolute, or who believes in the spiritual apprehension of truths that are beyond the intellect’, among other definitions.
(Definition source: The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase & Fable, 2005, Oxford University Press)
In that moment, it actually made a lot of sense to me. Since then I have contemplated the fact that my intuitive/meditative drawings, where I allow total freedom from thinking, or anticipating of what the drawing will be like, are in a way an embodiment of the dimension I saw in my dream, which I have always felt life itself to emerge from; an endless field of energy with endless possibilities within it.
(I guess this explains why I was equally fascinated by physics and religion when growing up in school).
It seems to me, to be what all forms of nature come from, including ourselves. Experiencing ourselves on this deeper level is a possibility, and meditative drawing is an access point.
It enables a relationship with self, other and nature that is profound and positive, which is is essential for people to truly care. Doom and gloom is not inspiring. Optimism and the illuminating truth is, no matter what your beliefs or background.
I see the development of this aspect of my drawing practice to be a force that will inspire empowering realisation and discussion, regarding how we conceive of our own place in the world and our appreciation of the climate and its rich nature, as well as our own.
– Words from artist Mike O’Brien, Feb 2025
