Geoff Greenham is a photographer who fouces on landscape, still life and portraiture (mostly informal). He also uses software to make composite images. His photographs in this year’s ‘Home Ground’ West Cork Creates exhibition “feature places in Skibbereen as they were in 1990 incorporated into images of those same places as they are today. The streetscape and skyline of Skibbereen has changed in the 35 years I have lived here.”

Whether it’s landscape, photo montage, still life or portraiture, Geoff’s imagery strives to capture an emotional response, an elevation of the ordinary to the extraordinary.

The moment of shutter release becomes his moment of insight.

The paradox of looking out through the lens and finding something that lies deep within.

Hi passion is creating and photographing still life compositions. “It’s demanding,” he shares “but you have total control over everything, the lighting, setup, nothing is left to chance.” 

Momento mori is a common theme running through his work. “Dead birds, leaves, dried flowers, all reminders of the inevitability of death, we are just passing through.”

Before turning to photography Geoff worked as a stained glass artist for 30 years where he undertook many private, commercial and ecclesiastical commissions.

His last big commission in stained glass was The Glen Church in Cork in 2009-10. “It consisted of 14 huge windows in a repetitive design: I designed a wave going all around the church. It took a year to complete and afterwards I couldn’t look at a piece of stained glass again,” shares Geoff.

Since 2012, Geoff has devoted his energy and creativity fulltime to photography.

Born to a Polish mother in the UK, Geoff is hoping to soon become an Irish citizen. ‘I feel more Irish than anything else,” he says. 

When he first arrived in West Cork in the 1970s, on a tour of the South of Ireland on motorbike, he describes feeling “an incredible sensation of ‘home’” when stopping at the lay-by on the N71 that overlooks Roaring Water Bay, the islands and the ruin that is now Jeremy Irons’ refurbished Kilcoe Castle. “I had an unusual sensation of home and belonging, that I could live in this beautiful part of the world, that it was comfortable, that I could set down roots here.”

Years passed and Geoff ended up falling for a Cork woman in Corfu, his future wife, who brought him home to meet her parents.

“Her father suggested we go Skibbereen, the place of his birth and where many of his relatives still lived. So off we set in a rented car and after many introductions and cups of tea, we eventually ended up at the lay-by on the N71 that overlooks the bay, the islands and the castle. Imagine my astonishment to see this view again and to learn that Dan, my future father in law, had been born in the house next to the lay-by.

“Time passed and we eventually inherited land overlooking the lay-by, the bay and the castle, which is where we have lived for the last 32 years.  

‘Anseo.’ It’s a mystery why this land spoke to me but I’m thankful to it.”

Geoff is currently exhibiting in The Blue House Gallery, Schull.

www.geoffgreenham.net

“I began to paint from memory places I had often painted in situ,” she explains. “I used no reference material, preferring instead to let arrangements distilled from memory take shape, almost of their own accord on the canvas.”

While Noël has a studio in both Berlin and West Cork, she has been spending more and more time in Ireland recently and, since 2018, she has been busy renovating a former pub in Drimoleague with her partner, which now houses a studio for both of them and a pop-up gallery.

Drimoleague was the homeplace of Noël’s father, the noted painter, Diarmuid O´Ceallacháin (1915-1993). O´Ceallacháin was in charge of the painting department at the Crawford Art School from 1940-1970.

“Painting was part of the fabric of home life…There was always a smell of linseed oil in our house,” shares Noël, who now divides her time between Berlin and West Cork.

“My father was constantly drawing – everywhere and all the time – and I was always watching him. I learned the importance of it from him and was fascinated by the gestures he made while doing this – the arm movements and the way he would size up the subject while getting it down on paper in a swift, decisive action. Sometimes he would take me sketching with him in the countryside. I have one vivid memory of being a small child sitting up on the bonnet of the car – the warmth of it, as I sat and sketched the field patterns of the valley below. I was later delighted to find my drawing from that day among my father´s papers.

One of the most important lessons Noël says she learnt from being around him was “to be true to yourself, regardless of what others think”.

“He was very different to everybody else – always doing things his own way and wearing clothes that were a little different. In the conservative Cork of the 50s and 60s and 70s, he would have been considered unusual or even a little ‘mad’.”

Inspired by her father, Noël can’t remember ever wanting to be anything other than an artist, however, by the time she followed in his footsteps to the Crawford to study art, he had retired from his post and it turned out the Crawford wasn’t such a good fit for his daughter. “I found the school-like atmosphere stifling compared to the artistic education, which I was absorbing at home,” she explains. She left and turned her attention to studying English Literature and History at UCC, where she became very involved with the Dramat – the university theatre society. Here she discovered a love and a talent for acting and, after graduating, she accepted a job offer with the newly formed ‘Graffitti’ Theatre Company. After two years touring with ‘Graffitti’ it felt time for a change of scene and Noël decided to relocate to Berlin where she soaked up the historical and cultural influences.

“West Berlin in the 1980s was a very unique place, circled by the Berlin Wall, with the scars of the war still apparent in the shrapnel-pocked buildings – It was the history I had studied come to life,” she shares. “The cultural history was also one I had always been interested in and one I identified with. The German expressionist painters had always been favourites of mine – Emil Nolde, Käthe Kollowitz, and The Brücke movement – and also Edvard Munch, who himself lived in Berlin. Brecht and Weil were for me the pinnacle of theatre: Bauhaus was my ideal of modern design. They had all been influences on me, and, fused with the sensibilities of the Punk Generation, I naturally gravitated toward the cultural possibilities that deserted factories and half-bombed areas provide – in a city that has a good social infrastructure, supports the production of art, and addresses the basic needs of it’s citizens in terms of housing, health care, youth centres etc. That was West Berlin before the wall came down. There was always work to be picked up – in youth centres, schools and bars – and because accommodation was so cheap, you could manage on two or three days work a week, leaving plenty of time for art and life. Nowadays Berlin is a different city where property speculators are eating the heart out of it.”

After working for a short time with a Commedia del Arte Theatre, in 1988, together with her partner, Douglas, and another friend, Noël formed the Turkish-Irish Speed Folk band ‘Alice Brennen’, playing regularly in Berlin clubs and touring Spain and Turkey. When the wall came down in 1989, the band, which had grown to six and later nine musicians, toured the former East Germany. Noël bought a guitar and was West Berlin´s first solo female busker which, as well as being fun she says, also paid the bills.

While music and theatre was during those years in the foreground of life for Noël, she continued to paint and draw. Her father’s death in April 1992 was the impetus she says she needed to return to painting fulltime. “I was struck by the thought of all the knowledge that was gone with him – the colour-mixes, the way of looking at the world and of making lines. It made me realise how much it all meant to me – and always had.”

Noël works in oil on canvas, linen, wood or paper. She also uses watercolour and for drawing, oil pastels, pens, markers and graphite. “Fluid, buttery materials.”

While she favours energy over academicism in painting, drawing is nonetheless an important aspect of Noël’s work.

Whatever the subject matter, be it a life drawing or a landscape, she explains that her intent is always to create a sense of immediacy, honesty and freedom.

“I am trying to express the world around me directly as I see it. I never expect anyone else to understand what I am doing and am always pleasantly surprised if people do. I want my work to be open and transparent in its construction so that how I arrived at the end juncture is clearly viable for those who wish to analyse it. 

“It’s a sort of deconstruction of the painted surface, which couples formal arrangements with very fluid and spontaneous mark-making. The support or ground (the basic surface of the painting for example canvas, wood, paper) is an important element for me and I like when it is evident in the finished painting. The unpainted area is as important for me as the painted. One defines the other as silence defines words. I want a feeling of rawness in the painting – the acknowledgement that this is a material object. I am trying to express the lyrical beauty and its effect on me but in a sparse, unsentimental way – much as a very young child does.

“I spend a lot of time mixing colours and trying to find new harmonies that excite me.”

While painting has become her full-time occupation, music and theatre have not left the life stage for Noël and in fact impact her painting.

“I play percussion and have recently got a full drum-kit, which I love playing. The structure of a drum (as a stretched skin) and stick is not so far removed from brush and canvas. Both the drum and canvas have a spring or bounce. The rhythm of the brushstrokes is important to me when painting and I tend to apply them in volleys much like playing. The tail-off of a brush stroke is a delight to me in the same way as the resonance of the last note of a musical piece. Words such as tones and harmonies are common to both music and painting. Much like a song is formally structured into verse, chorus, bridge etc., a painting is also formally arranged. Placing of elements is very important, regardless of whether the painting is representational or abstract.”

She explains how the immediacy of playing gigs or live theatre also has a resonance in that, in her painting and drawing, the action is as important as the finished work. “I am very active when painting – never sitting down but walking swiftly for miles back and forth between the easel and the wall, and my viewing position at the other end of the room. When I paint outdoors, I cycle everywhere with all my gear on the bike. The feeling of the unrepeatable moment is ever-present for me and this is a sense of urgency, which live performers will understand.”

Noël’s durational work ‘Live’, based on life-drawing in public spaces, was the first art event to be part of the Dublin Theatre Festival’s main programme in 1995. She has been commissioned for a number of public art projects in Berlin and has exhibited widely in both solo and juried shows, including the Oireachtas, the Crawford Open and Iontas. In his catalogue essay, Iontas adjudicator gallerist Bernard Jacobson singled out her work for its honesty and originality. “I was delighted, not least because he was the gallerist of my teen hero David Bowie!” she shares. In 2020 she was shortlisted for the Janet Mularney prize and selected for the Highlanes Gallery Open Submission Exhibition. Her work can be found in private and public collections in Ireland, Germany, UK, China and USA. She has received awards from the Irish Arts council and the Berlin Ministry of Culture.

While there have been many highlights throughout her career, one of the nicest things to happen she shares was an exhibition of 30 of her and her father’s paintings at Uillinn in December 2018 entitled ‘Affinities’. “In this show, works of his which had a special significance for me hung alongside works of mine, which I felt may have been unconsciously influenced by them. It was lovely to bring his work back to his birthplace.”

Noël is currently showing in the Boyle Arts Festival exhibition ‘Crossings’ and will be showing at the McKenna Gallery in Northern Ireland in the Autumn.

www.noel-o-callaghan.com

At her coastal property in West Cork, Kathleen is fortunate to be surrounded by 22 acres of land, some of which has been landscaped to assimilate with the rugged beauty of its surrounds. It’s this garden with its majestic rock formation, native ferns and mature trees that Kathleen looked to during lockdown for inspiration for her glazed stoneware and earthenware vessels, with relief added, created for this year’s West Cork Creates exhibition.

Born into an Irish artistic family in London – her father and brother trained as artists – Kathleen studied Marine Biology and followed a career in teaching in between raising her family before pursuing her passion for ceramics: She left teaching to enroll on a degree course in ceramics at the London Metropolitan University. Since graduating in 2005, she has exhibited in Ireland, USA, Germany, Belgium, China and the UK.

Kathleen’s collection includes small sculptures and vessels in addition to large pieces for display in gardens. ‘Industrial beachcombing’ in the fishing villages of West Cork and by the River Thames in London is central to much of Kathleen’s work and some of her finds have become old friends, settling themselves into the undergrowth of her property.

Hers latest work is based on identity and was inspired by Brexit and questions such as: Where do I belong? Is Ireland my home or am I seeing Ireland through the eyes of a visitor? This Identity series comprises three strands: large vessels with lids made in coloured clay with images and texture of West Cork; smaller textured vessels and wall panels based on the colours and textures of The Burren area, where her mother was born; and thrown, glazed stoneware and earthenware vessels with relief pattern, based on Kathleen’s garden. The latter work was made during lockdown.

She is currently exhibiting ‘Standing Stones’ in Richard Scott’s sculpture exhibition, in the grounds of Ballymaloe House, where she sold two of her three forms on opening evening.

While the UK is where her family is based, grown-up children and grandchildren, West Cork is where Kathleen’s artistic fire is fuelled and she and her husband John have made many good friends here. 

Life is West Cork is “nature all around us…coastal walks, cycle rides, sea swimming, boating, and much more,” she says passionately. The robust art scene in West Cork is also a draw. “Visual arts, music, plays and general nurturing environment for all aspects of the arts. Declan McCarthy music gigs (Baltimore Fiddle Fair) and Connelly’s of Leap musical events organised by Sam McNicolls are firm favourites.” 

Kathleen makes her own coloured clay, adding organic material, which burns out in the kiln, leaving an eroded surface.

While the work can be physically hard – she shows off the large heavy moulds for her vessels – this doesn’t phase her. “There just never seems to be enough time,” is this artist’s one real complaint.

Passionate about experimenting with clay, Kathleen somehow did find the time to fit in writing a much-lauded book about how clay body additions can introduce remarkable new forms and textures in ceramic work. In ‘Additions to Clay Bodies’ Kathleen reveals a range of possible effects, and profiles the extraordinary work of contemporary makers using additions in their practice.

When she’s not busy creating or writing, meeting the public and talking about her work and ceramics in general is a highlight for Kathleen. She is particularly interested in inspiring young people to strive and has taught at a number of different institutions and societies in Ireland and UK.

Christine is modest when talking about her work. “I have had great success being bad at any job I did so stuck to the freelance world of first black and white photography then printmaking, mostly etching then painting.”

Although she attended art school for four years, where her main subject was sculpture, a formal education carries no weight with her. “Like most people I know who did the same, I can’t say there was any training involved, even if we did all get degrees at the end. Most people who go to art school either give up art when they leave or train themselves as hard as they can for the rest of their lives.”

She admires work that is honest and not a victim of fashion and says her own influences are ever-changing. “I am inspired by what I see around me every day. The lives of people living and working the land without the knowledge any more than the birds have that they are part of it inspire me; but sadly those people are vanishing with the animals and insects around them.”

“The subjects that most interest me are those I paint, self sufficiency, independence, sustainability, protection of the world around us, if not the bigger world, then the small section of it that we can look after.”

Working mostly in oil paint on canvas, Christine also does a lot of sketching with charcoal and pastel and makes sculptures using found objects.

Not one to mince words, she says she is not keen on conveying a message through her artwork. “It seems hard enough to understand your own work without turning it into a message at the same time.” 

Christine is of mixed Russian, French and Welsh descent. Her mother was Russian, born in China, and was a refugee in Shanghai at the end of the 1940s where she met Christine’s father. They married in Shanghai Cathedral a month after meeting. Christine’s father, who worked for BOAC at the time, the British state-owned airline, had flown into Shanghai to help get refugees out during the Communist takeover. He was born in Canada to a German/French father and a Welsh mother. 

After attending art college in the UK, Christine returned to Hong Kong where she lived in traditional villages on the outer islands.

While earning her income as an illustrator, as well as a freelance photographer travelling in SE Asia on assignments, she also became part of a development project on one of the islands, growing traditional vegetables organically, helping the last rice farmers to improve their soil and broaden the markets for their produce. During this time she sketched, photographed and painted the day to day life in the village and is still developing some of that material now.

Living aboard a yacht with her husband sometime later, she worked on a small etching press and did illustration work for a yachting magazine in the UK, sending it back from ports along their route. She continued her etching work ashore when the couple moved into a house for two Maine winters.

In the early days of living on Heir Island, Christine concentrated mainly on printmaking while cultivating vegetables and taking care of chickens and ducks. Later when oil painting took hold of her, she began having regular summer exhibitions in The Gate gallery (later the Morris gallery) in Skibbereen. Unfortunately it was at the expense of her garden, as Spring was suddenly too busy a time in the studio to devote precious hours to food growing.

Christine views herself as quite a traditional artist. ‘I love paint itself and, although I do like a lot of abstract painting, I can only really paint pictures myself that have some sort of a story, even if that is only known to me.”

Each piece of her work has a story behind it and many of the tales are woven with threads of Hong Kong and West Cork. “The similarities between all people who live and work on the land whether in China or Ireland or anywhere in between really fascinates me,” she explains. “I plan a show of my Hong Kong and Ireland paintings all shown together one day so others can judge that for themselves.” This show was due to happen last May in Cheltenham. For now the paintings are still on Heir Island!

For this year’s West Cork Creates ‘Home Ground’ exhibition, Christine has painted the wild skies over her favourite part of the island, the western end across the bridge. “They were skies I saw, as I walked this winter and spring on the island that is vanishing, as it becomes depopulated of residents and becomes a holiday playground,” she says sadly, admitting that, as a result of this changing face of the island, she and her husband have made the difficult decision to move to live fulltime on the mainland (although Christine will keep her artist’s studio on Heir). “Most of the houses in my paintings are homes no longer, but empty all winter under the huge sky,” she shares. “Barely a thin grey whisp of smoke to fight off the massive weather.”

For the exhibition, Christine also painted a series of imagined women in their imaginative kitchens, painted in the colours she has seen in many old houses and ruins on the nearby islands and mainland.

Although it can be a challenge getting some of her bigger paintings off the island, Christine says the sense of thrill and surprise when someone wants to buy one of her paintings is worth the effort.

“I should do more to cultivate a collector base but am a bit allergic to social media, so rely on my past and present exposure in galleries,” she shares. “Like a lot of other people who paint or pot or sculpt I don’t like to self publicise, hate exhibitions if I have to be at them, and just want to work away and have someone come and collect finished paintings and sell them for me. A vain dream unfortunately!”

Christine loves being in her studio but, after a busy day painting, she relishes the stillness that comes with sitting down in the evening with a glass of wine while the sunset blazes in through the garden doors. The art of stillness has always been a part of island life.