Sometimes we need to celebrate what we all do
NIALL was away on a work trip, and I was having a fit-for-nothing-hermit Saturday, when I got a text from my friend Dea saying she and husband Kevin were going to an opening at the Green Fuse Gallery in Westport, that afternoon. ‘Wanna come?’
I like the Green Fuse. Even though it’s not a commercial gallery, insofar as it shows ‘proper’ art, it has an intimate, friendly atmosphere that makes it more accessible than the fancy galleries where I often feel the staff are glaring at you, wondering if you can afford the hefty price tags. Vincent O’Donoghue and his astonishingly beautiful an charming wife, Ivana, run their gallery in a way that makes buying real art seem possible.
Nonetheless it involved leaving the house. ‘Knackered,’ I texted, then realised it was a pitifully lame excuse.
‘It’s Mick O’Dea,’ she said. Mick O’Dea is a successful artist, and I have always admired his work. His partner is the austerely stylish photographer/artist Amelia Stein. One of the great ironies of my life has been that that living in the middle-ofnowhere West of Ireland, I’ve found myself becoming acquainted with them in a way that eluded me as a Dublin resident.
I met Amelia, briefly, at a Dublin theatre opening in 1998, when she walked across the room, announced in a stern voice, ‘I have never worn a dress in my life, but I would wear that one,’ then marched off again. The dress has not fitted me since 1999 but is still hanging in my wardrobe because I was so in awe of her.
I met Amelia for the second time, 19 years later, in January this year, through our mutual friends, Kevin (Toolis — has an actual BAFTA) and Dea (Birkett — Somerset Maugham Award) who are hiding away in Achill. I had heard a rumour that Amelia and Mick had a home even further down the coast than us, but something I’ve learned about living here is that you don’t bump into people when they’re in hiding.
It had been so nice meeting them but, when you’re in hiding yourself, as I am much of the time, it’s easy to not go out.
‘If you change your mind,’ she said, ‘we’ll be there.’ The boys were both in with Mum so I finished up the morning’s work and rewarded myself with a snack and a trawl through Facebook. All this virtual company to satisfy the hunger for acquaintance, but never replaces real company.
Many well known artists either permanently live or base themselves in Mayo. At 89, Camille Soutar is arguably the most venerated: living in a remote corner of Achill Island, her dramatic, emotional landscapes perhaps best represent the reason why some artists (and writers) choose to livehere. We are the odd-bods who want to slope off quietly, hide away from the world and do our thing in isolation.
MOVING out of Dublin cut me off from the literary scene and the arts world is still very Dublin-centric, which is annoying given that so much brilliant work is produced outside of it. And here was I turning down an opportunity to enjoy both art and company.
An hour later I was standing on the pavement outside in the Westport sunshine, mixing and mingling: enjoying the company of art friends, old and new and wondering why I didn’t say yes to every exhibition opening, book launch, arts event that gives me the opportunity to meet my peers and enjoy their work, their company — our mutual success.
Inside, Mick’s work was exquisite: quintessentially Mayo landscapes that were reminiscent of the muted pictures that my grandfather collected in the 1930s. The wine was good, the art was excellent: even ‘the style,’ as my mother would call it, was a ‘cut above’. We could have been in New York or London or Dublin — but we weren’t. We were in Mayo. And that was the joy of it.