“There are two places in the world that create a sort of a spark within one that is so unique…and one of those is Inis Mhic Oileáin..”
That’s how award-winning artist Maria Simonds-Gooding feels about the Kerry island, one of the Blaskets, which she camped out on some time before it was acquired by former taoiseach Charles J Haughey.
In her second of a series of occasional interviews with Wavelengths for Afloat, Simonds-Gooding recounts that first visit with her cousin, armed with a six-shilling bottle of Kruger’s port.
She describes how they trapped rabbits humanely and survived on very little water until a visiting yacht – with a starked naked lone sailor – left them supplies.
Etchings of Inis Mhic Oileáin by Maria Simonds-Gooding
She also recalls an experience with an angry black calf that convinced her the island may have been haunted.
“I’d love to have some of those paintings that I did on Inis Mhic Oileáin, if there’s anybody listening to this and you have one,” she says.
Maria Simonds-Gooding's recent book on the work of An File, published by Lilliput Press
Simonds-Gooding is the author of the recently published Lilliput Press book on Blasket Island painter Micheál O Gaoithín, which was the subject of her first Wavelengths interview.
Artist Maria Simonds Gooding with An File - Blasket islander Micheál O Gaoithín
Hear her second episode below on Wavelengths.
