Searching for Shapes: Shane O’Driscoll

I bought a Shane O’Driscoll rug!

Shane O’Driscoll is an Irish artist/designer. Ceadogán Rugs is based in Wexford and makes wonderful carpets and rugs using Irish designers. Take a look at their site – search by designer and you will see Shane and his rugs. Mine is the Swisha – I know now that it’s probably named for a piece of music. Above is a test piece for Swisha that ended up in Shane’s house. Look at that view!

Shane also happens to be my neighbour – well, close enough, just the other side of Mount Gabriel. He exhibits from time to time in the Blue House Gallery in Schull and I had met him there a couple of times: a man with a laid-back surfer-dude vibe. I love his prints and became curious about his art and his process. I also wanted to know more about my rug.

I visited him in his studio the other day. What I found was someone who is incredibly articulate about his vision, and generous in sharing that with me.

I was right about the surfing connection – surfing and skateboard culture, with its vibrant and modern designs and cool counter-culture energy was a huge influencer. He studied graphic design and worked as an art director for years in Dublin. A month-long career break was all it took to show him that he needed to go out on his own. He hasn’t looked back since.

The essence of Shane’s approach is to search for the elemental – the basic shapes that are hidden at the heart of everything we look at. He showed me a zine he produced while on a Paris residency – things that you and I wouldn’t even notice are grist to the mill for him.

Another collection of photographs is from wandering around the land on which he lives – the fields farmed by his wife’s family.

He said he approached designing rugs as partly a sculptural exercise, since it is three dimensional. Pile depth can vary and Ceadogán encouraged him to think outside the normal rug shape – although as it happens my own rug is square and has only one pile depth.

Shane’s work is all about balance. His motifs are often exact, geometrical, statically arranged on a flat background. But they bounce against each other and against elements that are more casual, less structured. Shane told me that the loose black brush stroke in Swisha – it’s called a gestural mark – grounds the design and creates a tension he likes against the sharp and disciplined edges of the blue and maroon elements. Perhaps the name Swisha, he said, also reflects the swoosh of the paint across the page (or the screen). It humanises the hard geometry, and in a way is a rebellion against all those years in design when precision was everything. He realised once it was finished that it wasn’t in fact finished and that’s when the orange went in – it’s like a piece of orange paper with torn edges. 

‘Like a Hurricane’ Image above courtesy of So Fine Art Editions

Shane works always with music playing and his titles are a calendar of what he’s been listening to. The music blocks out the tendency to analyse and over-intellectualise what he’s working on – he refers to a state of free flow – he finds it helps him focus and ‘centres his brain.’

Although prints are his main work, he has designed packaging, beer cans, water bottles (for the Irish Olympic team!), Easter egg boxes, coffee cups – all instantly recognisable with their signature shapes and vibrant colours.

Caroline Street mural, Courtesy of Backwater Artists

He’s done lots of street art and painting on buildings – next time you fly out of Cork Airport you will see this.

“The Wonder of Travel” is Cork’s newest street art mural, curated and created by Shane O’Driscoll and Peter Martin of ARDÚ Street Art. Picture: Darragh Kane. Courtesy Irish Examiner

It was a privilege and a pleasure to spend time with you, Shane. And thank you for my gorgeous rug. Now all I have to do is repaint the house to go with it.