It’s Good to be Back!

It’s been a long time since my last residency… 5 years, in fact. 

I was supposed to be here in 2020, but we all know what happened that year. So, this week, I found myself arriving in Listowel on the #13 bus, almost in tears, my heart aching with anticipation. 

In a way, it felt like I’d been gone for so very long, and in another way it felt like only last year that I was here, painting every day, having a scone and coffee at Lynch’s Bakery, take out lunch from Lizzie’s, a bowl of soup for dinner at The Horseshoe and a Guinness at John B’s. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone and catching up with what life has been like here in Listowel during covid and beyond. 

Enjoying a bit of “Window Theater” and a lovely treat from Mary

The great news is that things seem to have returned to (a relative) normal. The streets are busy with traffic and shoppers. Lynch’s Bakery opens a whole hour earlier (yippee!)  I have noticed that places are closed more than they used to be, so I’ll pay attention to store and restaurant hours. But boy, am I glad to see them all again! 

Already we’ve seen lots of good friends as they’ve popped into the gallery to say “Hello!”  And Mary popped by to bring a yummy treat! Yesterday several people called and messaged to tell us the quarterly Horse Fair was going on up on Market Street. What a treat! There were horses, ponies, miniature horses, a donkey and puppies!

It’s so very special to be welcomed back this way! I am always amazed by how much people go out of their way to make sure we experience all that Listowel has to offer.

This year I am here with Terry Shipley. She’s hard at work in the studio right now, creating gorgeous ceramic beauties…stay tuned for updates on her creations!

Terry working hard in the studio!

I will be diving deep into my Thin Places series. I’ve been working on this body of paintings since I came home from my very first residency in 2016 (Can it really have been 6 whole years ago?)  To deepen my understanding of Thin Places I took a 12 day tour of ancient sacred places in Ireland and came directly afterward to Listowel. It was such a moving and introspective journey through Sligo, West Meath and Doolin, spending time with several Cairns, Ring Forts, Holy Wells, a Brehan School ruin, St Colman’s Hermitage in The Burren and many other beautiful, ancient sacred places. I hope to find more here in Kerry. I bet we all know who might be able to help… Ahem, is Mr Damien Stack, world renowned Listowel and County Kerry historian and most extraordinary furniture store owner, around this month? I sure do hope so! 

Until I catch up with him, and everyone else, I’m in the studio, writing and painting. 

Can’t wait to see everyone! 

Hey Ya’ll, I’ve missed you so much!

We’re back, and we’ll see you soon! 

Signs You Don’t See at Home

Ahhhhh, Ireland …. I love your ways. I love your words. I love your laugh and your knowing nod, your faraway look, your love — that steadfast love.

But these signs ….

 

Walls and Wall Flowers

I’m a wall lover. I’ll ignore (this once) the philosophical implications of keeping out (or holding in); I’m simply drawn again and again and again to the beauty of man touching nature and entering that lovely communion, particularly when the touch is light, when each curve and coloration is naturally formed, and the grasses and flowers are allowed to have their way.

Hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

 

Ireland Art Residency

Visitors

On Thursday I wake to signs of a visitor in the night, and the prints indicate a larger visitor than the one I imagine might have been able to squeeze through the opening in the window. But we are each ingenious when we need to be, yes?

And I wonder why, with the wild beauty of all of Ireland at his toe tips, he wants to join us inside for the evening?

And then again, why not? I’m certain this is the loveliest flat in all of Ireland, replete with charm and quirkiness and vistas of both town and countryside.

In for a Peek

Bathroom View

Bedroom View

Bedroom Flowers

Choosing Paths

Future Courtyard Gallery!

Alas, a closer inspection shows that he stepped tentatively only twice down the smooth tile walls before turning back. For this I am grateful, I suppose, but I wish him many interesting places to explore and, if they fit nicely, to stay awhile and become a part of the life there, just as I am. After all, I arrived a stranger too, without, as far as I know, an ounce of Irish blood in my French and English ancestry. But oh how this land and these generous and so very authentic souls have captured and welcomed me — how can I not do the same?
We are all explorers at heart, whether we long for distant lands, an intricate understanding of the lives of insects, an intimacy of home and family, or even a roadmap to the self. I wish a beautiful journey to all, and a warm and welcoming spot for the night.

The Wild Ones

I’ll start this post with two admissions. First, it’s a good thing I brought an extra pair of jeans, and second, I should have picked a flatter chunk of limestone for my writing desk.

Okay yes, AND I’m the only one on the burren, North Clare’s fabulous limestone Lower-Carboniferous-Period wonderland, typing away on a laptop while perched atop a world wonder. While Olive sketches and Laura paints, I’m snapping images of wildflowers spouting forth from stone like a madwoman, and trying my damnedest to process euphoria into words as I look across this improbable landscape toward the Aran Islands. I could sit here for weeks without moving, as I’m certain many have before me.

Which is actually a better idea that leaving your silver laptop on a gray rock and then wandering around to explore. Not for the first time, a sticky note has saved me.

We’ve been lucky the past two days to catch glimpses of the islands as they fade and reappear in the mists (there’s that Brigadoon thing again), three occasional mounds in the sea with a dot of a white house here and there, beckoning. Me? Did you mean me?

The flowers dance in the sea breeze, coy with their names and origins, as the burren is home to 75% of the species of flora found in Ireland. If you were forced to sum me up in 4 words, wind, stone, sea and wildflowers would likely do the trick. It is heaven here — just a wild landscape and a girl restless to know every secret of life. Here, I can easily believe for a moment that I do.

There’s a perfumery nearby that makes scents from the rare burren wildflowers. I’d like mine in pink clover, salt air, and wild horses please.

The burren covers 96 square miles on northern County Clare, stretching before me to the ocean and rising behind me to touch the clouds. The limestone formed as sediment in a tropical sea covering most of Ireland  350 million years ago, give or take. Her varied faces range from smooth sheer cliffs to jagged outcroppings to deeply gouged rock to rounded boulders gifted by glacial slides. She is mottled with grays and charcoals and whites and breathes out flowers and ferns and the occasional mounded tuft of grass. The sloping fields to my left are lined with hedgerows and sprinkled with cattle, while an errant field near the sea to my right seems to shelter a group of wild ponies … or is that my imagination again?

There is the occasional 24” of path, but in the end, you make your own. Olive and I pick our way carefully; Laura runs down like a mountain goat and has a handful of brushes out before she reaches her spot.

We are fond of the word Wild here. Wild salmon, wild caught, wildflowers, wild pinks, the Wild Atlantic Way. My first business was called Wild Hair Adventures; my license plate reads WLIDHIAR. In the end, or even better at the beginning, we each have a wild heart that seems to know the way.

Brigadoon Lives! (They just had the country wrong)

So yes then, I’ve a question. Is it rude to take photos of the people sitting on top of you? Last night there was a moment during the 6 to 9 club at the pub when Carol was leaning so far across Laura that she had to prop herself on my knee, and Eamon and Ann paired their two heads with mine in an effort to hear every word, and their heads — the one crisp and bearded with white in an Indiana Jones hat and a fierce listening expression — the other a brilliant red with her green eyes forward and kind — had their faces just so in the evening light until they positively glowed, and I knew I was among angels. Carol was filled with the spirit, quite literally as she was gleefully telling them their house is haunted, punctuated by numerous slaps on my knee, and they were eager recipients. Mind you, I’ve only just met these people, and quite honestly, it was like being enveloped by a fully mystical experience. But that’s the Irish for you.

And so it begins, my lovely month in Magical Listowel, with her pretty shop fronts, her wild and rugged countryside, and her endlessly embracing people. Yes, sometimes to the point of squuushing just a bit, but I’ve decided to find it charming and love them up right back.

My first couple of days have landed me smack in the middle of writer’s week. Now where I come from, that might be a bit daunting, writers having that general aloofness thing going (some use a different word, but let’s be gracious), but in Listowel I’ve been given autographed books with a grin and a bow, serenaded by two of the most ethereal songwriters I’ve ever heard, quoted poetry from atop a daisy-covered bank, smiled at (who knew we could smile?), bear hugged, and made room for at the bar, that last being a true gesture of love indeed.

And so my stay in this country where nothing is as you expect is off to a starry-eyed start, as I wander wide-eyed from the town center (where they’ve placed a piano and every tinkle of the ivories brings out cellists and fiddlers and toe-tappers) to the shore and find myself between two flowery fields of horses and foals, manes flying as they run with exuberance toward the mountain-ringed sea and back again while I’m serenaded by two young boys on banjo and bodhrán. Magical indeed. So crossing my fingers this won’t have disappeared in the morning.

Big hugs from Pam, my fabulous flatmate and co-artist-in-residence Laura McRae Hitchcock, and the generous and infinitely talented Olive Stack!