Sketchbooks with images recording island life and landscape over the last 30 years form the basis of a new exhibition by Connemara artist Pádraic Reaney.
Entitled Oileán, it comprises 49 paintings and graphics from Irish and Scottish islands and from Malta. The exhibition was opened by poet Joan McBreen in Galway’s Kenny Gallery late last week.
Reaney, who is from An Cheathrú Rua and lives near Moycullen, began the sketchbooks in the late 1980s when he was part of a group of local artists named the Island Connection.
That group, including John Behan, Vicki Crowley, Jay Murphy and Brendan Fitzsimons, travelled to several European islands including Malta, Tenerife and Inishbofin. Reaney later visited Scottish islands including Lewis and Mull.
As Reaney told Judy Murphy of The Connacht Tribune, he first explored the transience of existence in 1979 when he created a series of prints of cottages that were ruined or disintegrating in and around the fishing harbour of Ros-a-Mhíl in south Connemara.
He took the same approach to housing on the island of Inis Áirc, close to Inishbofin, off the north Connemara coast in 2002.
The last 23 residents left Inis Áirc in 1960, as recorded in Kieran Concannon’s documentary film Inis Airc, Bás Oileáin (Inishark, Death of an Island), which was produced in 2007 by C-Board Films for TG4 television.
“Inis Áirc opened my eyes to the value of what I was putting down,”Reaney told Murphy. “ A sense of capturing something that was slipping away, unbeknownst to the world.”
This work inspired his exhibition entitled Inis Áirc which ran in the Kenny Gallery in 2018, and which forms part of the new display.
Impressions from the Mediterranean island of Malta dating from 1988, and from High Island and Inishlacken off Connemara and Inishnee close to Roundstone are also incorporated, along with Inchagoill on Lough Corrib, the Aran island of Inis Mór, Mayo’s Clare island and recent drawings from Achill island.
Oileán runs in the Kenny Art Gallery, Liosbán, Galway until December 8th, with opening hours Monday to Saturday from 9 am to 5 pm.