Slovakian artist blossoms among the people of Inis Mór
When Lucia Blizniakova moved to the Aran Islands nearly a decade ago she described herself as extremely shy, but as the years passed by she grew more confident. So confident, that she recently opened an art gallery on Inis Mór to display and sell her work.
Nine years ago, Lucia, who always had a keen interest in art, packed up her bags and art supplies and moved from Slovakia to “the rock.”
She had little to no English when she began her new journey, but slowly learned the language while she worked at the island’s hotel.
For extra income, Lucia continued doing what she loved the most – drawing portraits.
The Slovakian native has been practicing art since she was six years old at school and during her high school years she trained as a fashion designer.
She was always “obsessed” with art. While she’s skilled in all creative aspects, her passion is portrait drawing.
Back in Slovakia, Lucia worked in a factory but balanced that with drawing portraits for commission work.
It was then she made the dramatic move to engage in a different lifestyle on the Aran Islands
“My first plan was to come here for two years, make some money and go home,” Lucia said.
“But, of course, I fell in love with this island, and I always wanted to go to Ireland . . . that was my big dream. I never thought that dream would happen.”
So Lucia, who is now 35, become a foreign resident of the island. The more she drew, the more popular her work became with islanders.
“People knew my work, so I decided why not take another step to try to do something bigger,” Lucia explained.
She has been putting together her “Aran Islands Collection” which contains drawings of the beautiful island scenery.
Along with working on her collection, she’s drawing portraits for commission.
On May 13 last Lucia and her fiancé, Rónán Mac Giollapharaic, opened an art gallery called Aran Fine Arts, or Fioráliinn as Árainn, in the island village of Kilmurvey.
Ronan’s work consists of stunning pen and ink drawings that are full of ornamental details.
Since opening the gallery, the talented couple have received a great response from both islanders and tourist.
“We’ve had huge, massive support from islanders. It’s a really great community, I’m really lucky,” she said.
But, one of the most rewarding aspects of opening the gallery was making contacts with artists scattered all over the world who travelled to the popular tourist spot.
“The first few days we didn’t really sell anything, but people were coming in and they were really amazed. I didn’t really care that I didn’t sell anything. What made me really happy was that artists from New York or Germany were amazed by my work and I was amazed by their work,” Lucia added.
Lucia and Ronan are now planning to further decorate the outside of the gallery to attract more customers.
Although she doesn’t admit it, Lucia is now fluent in English, but she wants to completely master the language before she starts really buckling down to learn Irish.
“I can only give orders to the dog in Irish right now,” she laughed.
“It’s a really hard language, but I’m trying.”
Even though she’s kept herself quite busy, she hopes to start working on another collection soon focused on drawing portraits of islanders.
■ Along with the gallery, Lucia’s work is displayed and sold on her website lucia-b.com and her Facebook page.