New exhibition inspired by islands near and far

“An island is neither land nor sea. It’s not the same as the mainland,” says artist Pádraic Reaney about his attraction to these places that are surrounded on all sides by water.

They’re the focus of his latest show, Oileán, a collection of 49 paintings and graphics that will be opened this Friday night, November 12, in the Kenny Gallery in the city’s Liosbán Estate. The works originated in sketchbooks which he began in 2008 and which run to 2019, when he had a three-week residency in the Heinrich Böll Cottage in Achill, a period he describes as “very productive”.

But he adds that only a fraction of what’s on show in Kennys’ relates to Achill.

“There’s enough from Achill to do a show on its own and that’s on the cards for again. The Deserted Village on its own would be enough,” he says, referring to the Mayo island’s abandoned village of nearly 100 stone ruins, the remnants of a settlement that was deserted in the mid 19th century.

Pádraic started the sketchbooks in the late 1980s, when he was part of Island Connection. This group of local artists that included Jay Murphy, Vicki Crowley, John Behan and Brenda Fitzsimons, travelled to various islands throughout Europe, including Malta, Tenerife and, here at home, Inishbofin.

“When I was on those islands, I wasn’t going to miss the chance,” he says of the studies he did during those times and later on Scottish islands including Lewis and Mull. “The sketchbooks are the rehearsal for the big thing,” he says, comparing the completed works to “the full orchestra”.

Originally from Carraroe and living in Moycullen for many years, Pádraic “never thought of myself as a landscape painter”. However, he adds that many years ago the art critic Desmond McAvock observed that everything he did ‘came from the landscape’. Pádraic acknowledges the truth of that, “although not in the way of going out and sitting in front it”, he says.

Again and again he is pulled to places where communities are disappearing or have gone, something that seems to be more acute on islands.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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