Betty Christie.
Betty is a member of the Watercolour Society of Ireland, the Pastel Society of Ireland, the Irish
Society of Botanical Artists, and the Association of Art and Design Education.
She is a retired art teacher.
Her work is held in private collections and in the collections of Limerick University, Enterprise
Ireland, the Watercolour Society of Ireland, the South Eastern Trust, the Northern Ireland Civil
Service and the Office of Public Works State Collection.
Fallen Nests, found after the Storms.
This painting is in watercolour on heavyweight 640gms Fabriano paper.
I love the delicacy of watercolour, and the detail and textural qualities which can be achieved.
Heavyweight paper requires no stretching which means more time for painting.
I have always been fascinated by the intricacy of nests and have been drawing them since I was
an art student.
I have quite a collection now, some of them given to me by friends, some found in my garden,
and many found when walking my dog in the beautiful Lagan Valley.
Obviously, they are all old nests which are no longer in use, after the young birds have fledged.
I start looking from the end of summer, throughout the autumn and winter, when most of the
trees and shrubs have lost their leaves, making it easier to see them in the bare branches.
Storms and rough winds also dislodge nests, and this year I was lucky to find several on the
ground.
Of these five nests I know that the large one in the middle is a blackbird's nest.
The mossy green dome-shaped nest to the left of the blackbird nest is a wren's nest and the
lichen covered one to the right has been built by a chaffinch.
I am not sure about the tiny nests at either end. I found one of these on the Lagan towpath and
the other below some trees on Malone View Road. I think they may be goldfinch nests.
The painting is simply a study of these nests and was an excuse for me to indulge my obsession
of analysing and recording each amazing natural form.
Foraging Field Mice on Sunflower Seedheads.
This painting is in watercolour and white pencil on heavyweight 640gms Fabriano paper.
The sunflowers and mice are in watercolour, and I have used white colouring pencil to add the
details, especially of the seed heads.
We have field mice in the garden, and we watch them scuttling around among the plants and
shrubbery, searching for food, and climbing up to eat the sunflower seeds we put out for the
wild birds.
I had planted sunflowers last summer with the idea in mind for this painting, but they were not
very successful, small and feeble looking, and very disappointing, so I went to a sunflower field
at a farm in Donaghadee to get some much bigger ones.
I like to work from first hand subject matter where possible but did resort to looking at some
photographs for the details and different positions of the mice, as they did not stay still long
enough in the garden.
I very much enjoyed drawing and painting the shapes, patterns, textures and colours of the
withering leaves and the stalks of the sunflowers, while being challenged more with the seed
patterns.
I had not planned for as many as fifteen mice but once I started, I could not help myself wanting
to add more and more!
"Oh, land of password, handgrip, wink and nod." Seamus Heaney.
This painting is in watercolour, and iridescent watercolour for some of the magpie feathers, on
heavyweight Arches paper.
I used sea salt flakes on the watercolour to achieve the texture of the rocks in the foreground.
The view of Stormont "on the hill" and the iconic cranes set in the lights of the city was achieved
by going up to just below Divis Mountain to get a photograph from there which had these
landmarks. I deliberately chose to omit the hills behind Stormont.
The magpies are from first hand observation aided by photographs.
The title of this painting is a line from the poem Whatever You Say Say Nothing, in the book of
poetry entitled North, by Seamus Heaney.
North was published fifty years ago, in 1975, the year I graduated from art college in Belfast.
The poems deal with the danger, death, atrocities, destruction and sorrow of life in the north of
Ireland during that turbulent and troubled time.
This is a very long poem, very much of the years pre 1975 and probably even difficult to
understand except by a certain age group, which is a very positive thing, I suppose. Despite the
subject matter, it is written with resilience, and vocabulary characteristic of the time, even
humorous, if the topic was not so serious.
The line I have used for the title of my painting refers to secrecy and suspicion, and the need to
hide your identity from others you might have had reason, perceived or otherwise, to fear, that
they were perhaps on the so-called "other side."
Thankfully, so much has changed over those fifty years.
However, sadly, not everything has, and many questions remain unanswered about Ireland's
troubled past.
My painting is a reference to this, hence the seven slightly anthropomorphic magpies, seven
magpies being for secrets (or a story) never to be told, according to that well known rhyme.
It is also an acknowledgement of North, and one of my favourite poems, fifty years on, as well as
an appreciation of all of Seamus Heaney's work.