Monday, September 19, 2005

A nice little study from the pond



Here is a nice study I did of the reflection from a willow tree around the lake in Marlay Park. I like it's freshness and simplicity.

Most importantly it looks wet.

Apart from this work, nothing else is coming together at the moment. I have spent hours contacting members of the oireachtas to lobby for the continuence of our Artist's exemption. I have email editors of newspapers with letters:


Dear Editor,
As a full time Artist living and working in Dublin I wish to make your
readers aware of what the loss of the exemption will do to the majority
of Artists.
The added costs of book-keeping and audited accounts will create further
losses to
our income, at the moment averaging under 4,000 euro per annum, YES!
thats 80 euro per week, add audit costs of min. 1000 euro per year and
you should see where we stand. As it is Dublin has lost many of it's
Artists, who cannot afford to live here and have moved to rural Ireland
where at least studio costs (sheds) are cheaper and vegetables etc. can
be grown to survive. The Govt. seems to want to kick us again. The
introduction of SSIA's took what little money that was available to
Artists (ie. luxury spending) out of circulation, now we have the threat
of extra costs due to having to become tax compliant, to prove in effect
that we spend years in 3rd level education to work for a slave wage.
Ireland, and Dublin in particular has a
tradition of nurturing the Arts, this tradition is dissapearing fast, we
are getting left further and further behind in this tiger economy. We
produce work of Artistic and Cultural value. Value us. Cap the exemption
by all means, but dont destroy the majority of Artists who need the
exemption to survive. The baseline is 60 or 80 euro a week as a wage,
most of us are not super-rich, we are below the bread-line.
Have a heart...ensure we keep our exemption.
Yours,
Greg Long.

I don't know if it will do any good, but we can but try.

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