Book Launch Event | Helen Gaynor at Wexford Library

Launching on Thursday, July 7, at Wexford Library, Mallin Street at 7 pm is the Lockdown ‘diary’ by visual artist and writer Helen Gaynor, a creative endeavour that tracks her creative journey through two years of restricted living.

A Wilderness of my Own is hard backed, in full colour, and contains poetry, prose, photographic and painted images, drawings, collages and digital ‘reconstructs’, side by side with lists, notes, and other banal references to ordinary life in extraordinary times.

With foreword by Catherine Bowe, the publication uses a series of poems on topics closely allied to nature, in particular bird life, and aspects of life in a pandemic to add structure. It is both culmination, record and expression of two strange years, as the artist struggles with change of living circumstances, loss, and creativity, all existing side by side.

Putting the book together allowed an opportunity to gain perspective on the period, to recognise the positive aspects of it, and to find joy in the knowledge that grounding ourselves in Nature has much to offer in an increasingly technological age.

A small number of paintings central to the book will be exhibited on the night, and speakers will include Reiltin Murphy, calligrapher and Gaynor herself who will read a small selection of her poems.

The book is available to purchase at https://theirishbookshop.com or email irishbooks@yahoo.com.