Some artworks just take hold of you. They won’t be rushed, and they certainly don’t settle for simplicity. Colours of Ulysses #068 was one of those pieces.
Now, most of my artworks demand time — either at the conceptual stage or when I’m standing brush-in-hand at the canvas. But this one asked for something else entirely. It asked for complexity — creative complexity.
It knew it wasn’t finished, and it let me know. Loudly.
Details tumble over one another
From the very beginning, I leaned into Joyce’s words on page 68 of Ulysses, where details tumble over one another, almost cinematic in pace and depth. I began by layering in the familiar yellow and red of Boland’s breadvan and gave them tyre-like texture to mimic the van’s reliable presence on Dublin’s streets.
‘Boland’s breadvan delivering with trays our daily but she prefers yesterday’s loaves’ —
Then came the fading gold of the sky, and shimmering green for the trees and ‘water scented with fennel’. I added more yellow — a nod to ‘track of the sun. Sunburst’ — and a touch of blue to call in the Bank of Ireland, mentioned almost offhand, but important in the palette of the city.
But the most striking hue for me in this piece is violet, taken from that unforgettable line:
‘Night sky moon, violet, colour of Molly’s new garters.’ It stayed with me. It insisted on being centre stage.
And then came the vine motif
That swirling, curling top layer. It arrived after I re-read the section describing ‘Turbaned faces going by. Dark caves of carpet shops, big man, Turko the terrible, seated crosslegged smoking a coiled pipe.’ It felt richly exotic, smoky, complex.
The vine shapes became smoke, yes — but also a visual representation of Bloom’s wandering mind, of the multicultural tapestry of Dublin, hinted at in ‘the shadows of the mosques along the pillars: priest with a scroll rolled up’.
Dense, layered, rich with textures…
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what inspired me on this page — because it’s stunning. It’s dense, layered, rich with textures and imagery and contrast. That’s what I set out to capture here. Not a single moment, but the feeling of the entire page — as if all its words and wonderings had a colour, a movement, a texture.
The calming pale blue of the vine layer brings it all together. It weaves a thread through the noise and colour, softly connecting the corners and quieting the chaos.
This painting challenged me. But it also changed me. It marks a shift — perhaps even the beginning of a new direction in this series. One I’m only just starting to understand.
What do you see?
Let me know what you see in it. I always love hearing what others find in my work — especially in pieces like this, that hold so much.
Natalie x