Join artist Elizabeth Cope in VISUAL's galleries, amidst the stunning range of artworks in Acts of Creation: on Art and Motherhood to learn to sketch and paint your own self portrait from life.

During these workshops you will be provided with materials to create your own sketches and paintings. This is a loose workshop, all levels of experience are welcome, Elizabeth will move through the space and support all participants to be playful and enjoy the process. Participants can join one or both of the workshops and bring their own materials or use those provided by VISUAL.

Cope has been working as a painter for the last 50 years, taking the same representational approach when painting her wide range of subject matter; whether friends, family, animals, landscapes, or pieces of farm machinery. Some are straightforward depictions, but in the majority of her work these subjects and elements combine in a rich, often surrealistic fashion.

Various motifs crop up repeatedly in her work; self-portraits, her husband and children, a dancing lobster, a plastic crab, sweeping brushes, tape measures, frank depictions of the body at various stages of life. A key to understanding Cope’s work is the context in which it is made; she identifies her work and its production as inseparable from the rest of her life – helping to run a working farm, raising children, hosting friends and other artists, traveling. It is in the midst of this, what Cope has called the ‘chaos of everyday life’, that her work is produced.

Tickets can be purchased online, in person or over the phone at Box Office. Tickets are non-refundable and non-transferable. Wheelchair users and any group over 8 persons should book tickets directly through Box Office. Further Terms and Conditions can be found at visualcarlow.ie/visit/booking-information.