Errigal ard

Anyway, I probably won’t be writing much on this blog for the next while, keeping the head down, like your man below…

the reader

The Gallery is named after the Bourn-Vincent family, who in earlier centuries played a prominent role in the civic life of Limerick City, having contributed six Mayors to the city between 1703 and 1803. I’m told that their extraordinary acts of generosity, though not widely known, have rarely been surpassed and it is appropriate that this Gallery should bear their name.

And it’s a fantastic gallery! It is run by the Visual Arts Office of the University, who also look after several prestigious art collections, including The National Self Portrait Collection of Ireland, The Watercolour Society of Ireland Collection, The Medical Art Collection and of course, the University of Limerick’s own art collection.

the interior of the gallery

40 x 40cm, oil on canvas

Early this morning, hundreds of people gathered at Newgrange in Co. Meath to mark the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year.  On the days around the solstice, between the 19th and the 23rd of December, the light from the rising sun shines straight into the inner chamber at Newgrange, as it has done since the passage grave was first constructed about 5000 years ago.  It was cloudy this morning however, so there wasn’t much to see, but the solstice falls on the 22nd of December this year, so hopefully tomorrow, the clouds will stay back and allow the light of the Sun to reach into the ceremonial chamber and illuminate the mysterious symbols carved into its stone walls.

Unfortunately the knowledge and understanding of those who constructed this monument is lost in the mists of time but we do know that after tomorrow, the days will grow longer, there will be a new year, a new beginning, and the cycle of life will continue…

'Sleeping bag, sheet and Cardboard boxes'

" in the Marketplace ", December 2011

” As befits a man who values his poetic vocation as highly as his political ideals, President Michael D Higgins used his inauguration to deliver a speech which fused his two driving passions into a stirring vision of the Ireland he wishes to preside over.

It would be a nation where the “seedbed of creativity” not only enriched our culture but also society and even the economy. The new President praised Irish efforts in the realms of progressive idealism and artistic imagination, speaking of “our humanitarian, peace-building and human rights work”, in the same breath as those creative achievements which have “helped us cope with adversity, soothed the very pain which they describe so well, and opened the space for new possibilities”.

It was, in short, a clarion call that placed the arts at the very centre of Irish public life, an aspiration symbolised by his own election as head of State. But while the victory of such a culturally attuned figure provides an antidote to the fetishistic materialism of the boom, Higgins’s arrival in Áras an Uachtaráin also sends out a misleading signal.

Despite the assiduously cultivated notion that Ireland is a country where culture and politics enjoy a symbiotic relationship, our artistic and political worlds largely exist in a state of mutual misapprehension. Despite sharing a highly visible and growing interface over the past four decades, the two arenas have little in common. Much as CP Snow characterised humanities and science as “two cultures” incapable of understanding each other, so politics and the arts in Ireland remain separate, uncomprehending realms.

Given the historical precedents, this might sound odd. Ireland’s first president, Douglas Hyde, was a pioneering figure in the Celtic revival, the cultural renaissance that inspired many of leaders of the Easter Rising: as Higgins pointed out during the presidential debate on TG4, four of the seven signatories of the 1916 declaration were poets.

More recently, politics and the arts have seemed more intertwined than ever. Since the 1960s, Ireland has become nearly as famous for its pioneering measures in nurturing artists as for its imaginative output. And only last month, at the Global Irish Economic Forum in Farmleigh, politicians and artists were asserting the importance of culture in regenerating the country.

But the relationship between politicians and artists is ambivalent at best. Trumpeting artistic achievements may be a de rigueur exercise for Irish politicians, but it is a recent development, driven as much by self-interest as any cultural awareness… “

The article continues -  read the rest of it in the paper or you can see it on The Irish Times website.

Joe, 32" x 36", oil on canvas

I met with Eddie McParland today.  He’s a professor, retired from the Department of History of Art and Architecture in Trinity College, Dublin.  He bought my painting entitled ‘Joe’ at the Davy Portrait Awards exhibition last year, and he has it hanging in his rooms in Trinity.  It was a rare treat to visit his rooms, which were hung from floor to ceiling with paintings, and not just any paintings – he had a beautiful Evie Hone, and works by Martin Gale, T.P. Flanagan, Blaise Smith and many, many more.  In between the paintings, he had shelves, shelves which were creaking under the weight of books, notebooks, catalogues and plaster statues…  We had coffee and mince pies, milk poured from a silver jug.

The meeting had been arranged by Mary O’Brien, the CEO of the Irish Landmark Trust.  Fionnuala Rockett who had studied Art History and won the prestigious Purser Griffith Award was also there.  We munched our mince pies and sipped our coffees and looked around in awe at a collection that must have taken years to put together.

The Irish Landmark Trust is a charity that was founded in 1992 to save historically important and unusual ‘landmark’ buildings on the island of Ireland and, once restored, to re-use them as quality self- catering holiday accommodation.  At its heart is the principle that the structure itself is of prime importance and any restorative intervention respects this.  See below, a photograph of one of their landmark buildings, the lighthouse at Wicklow Head.

The Trust is holding a fundraising exhibition tomorrow, Wednesday,  in the RHA Gallagher Gallery in Dublin.  Over 150 works will be on sale, including works by artists such as Patrick Scott, Carey Clarke, Robert Ballagh and… well yes, I have a piece in it too.

An Irish Landmark Trust building at Wicklow Head

The Omagh Bomb Memorial

But I was talking to Seán about the Omagh Bomb Memorial project which he created a few years ago.  The Omagh bombing was carried out on the 15^th of August 1998 and 29 people were killed and approximately 220 people injured.  The victims included people from many different backgrounds – Catholics and Protestants, a Mormon teenager, two Spanish tourists, a woman pregnant with twins, several children – it was one of the worst attacks in the history of the Troubles.

I visited the memorial in 2009 and found it an extremely moving experience.  The site of the explosion is marked by a glass obelisk.  In a memorial garden, about 300 yards away, 31 mirrors catch the sun’s rays and send a beam of light back from the garden, via a complex arrangement of additional mirrors, until the light shines into the heart of the obelisk.  

Strangely enough, Omagh receives the least amount of sunshine in Ireland and so, because of its position, the bomb site is more often than not in the shade.  When I visited the town in August 2009, it was raining as we parked the car.  We visited the garden first and stood in silence by the pond as we thought of those who had died and of those who had been left behind.  We then made our way up through the town to the glass obelix and, we could hardly believe it, the rain had stopped and the sun shone briefly, sending its heavenly light into the wounded heart of the town.

My first impression was that the quality of the work on show was extremely high.  It’s a much smaller show than the RHA Annual exhibition, or at least the space allocated for the work is much smaller.  Like academy exhibitions in the past, the paintings here are hung close together, only inches separating one from the next.  I would have preferred more white space, it would have been easier to view and appreciate the work.  Maybe if they had been given more room in the museum…  but there was another exhibition on the same floor, entitled: “The Queen, Art and Image”.

But anyway, there were paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints, photography and architectural models.  Technical skill very much in evidence.  It’s very much the typical academy show, sometimes I wonder: all those exciting advances of the last century, the journey towards abstraction, the elevation of the concept, the new media, the new challenges – was it all a dream?

I was discussing with a friend about how there seemed to be two art worlds, (or at least two ) art worlds – one, the Academy world where the traditional skills are valued above all else and one, the Contemporary world where it seemed like ‘anything goes’.  “Which world do you belong to?” asked my friend.  I thought about it for a while and then I said:  “Ye know, I have to say: Neither”

Here’s the painting that I had in the show … 

Johnny, 12" x 12", oil on canvas