Irish Art

Thomas Denny in Ireland

I have spent most of this week at a symposium in Trinity College on Stained Glass, and there we received the good news that soon there will be another Thomas Denny window in Ireland. Way back in 2018 I wrote about Ireland’s Newest Stained Glass Window. I have updated and edited that post, and it follows this introduction. It’s a story that reaches into the heart of Irish History and the turbulent chronicles of the town of Tralee in Kerry.

Tralee’s Reconciliation window is no longer Ireland’s newest, although it remains for now the only Irish window by Thomas Denny, the most celebrated stained glass artist working in Britain today. Besides this blog post, I also wrote about this window for the Irish Arts Review, and for the 2023 edition of Glory, Azure and Gold: The Stained-Glass Windows of Thomas Denny.

The rest of this post is a lightly edited version of my 2018 piece.

It isn’t often that new stained glass windows are installed in Irish churches. In fact, depressingly, many churches fall into disrepair from lack of use and the windows break (or are broken). Nowadays we are more likely to be losing stained glass than gaining it. So it’s a huge cause for celebration when a community commissions a new piece. Hats off to Tralee!

The Garden of Eden or an image of reconciliation: one of the window details

This window is out of the ordinary in many ways. Let’s start with who commissioned it, which leads us on to the theme. Although it’s installed in the Catholic church, it was a joint initiative of the Catholic and Church of Ireland congregations. There may be other windows that can claim that distinction, but I don’t know of them. Here is the complete window.

The theme is Reconciliation, and the central figure is the return of the prodigal son. The right panel is of Jesus reading from the Book of Isaiah and the left is of John the Baptist, patron saint of the church.

The father embraces his prodigal son

The Parable of the Prodigal Son is a natural choice to illustrate reconciliation, with the father embracing the son who has squandered his inheritance but returns home, contrite, to his family. Instead of punishing him (as his brother resentfully feels the father should do) his father embraces him, orders that the fatted calf be slain for a feast, and says, It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found.

Jesus Reading from Isaiah is perhaps at one remove from a direct reference to reconciliation. It happened in Nazareth, his old home town, and he read at the behest of the elders. The passage is a beautiful one and points to ideas of love and healing, and perhaps to the real purpose of Christianity, no matter the denomination: he hath sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised.

St John is the patron saint of the church 

Possibly my favourite image is that of John. Usually, he is shown in the act of baptising Jesus, but here he is, the ascetic in his coat of camel hair, very much as he described himself, as a voice crying in the wilderness.

A myriad of tiny images fills the panels – figures holding hands (reconciliation), swallows (hope of spring, renewal), Tralee Bay, figures from Tralee history. . . there are even tiny names engraved where it is impossible to see them. Take a look at this video, where Thomas Denny shows us some of those names.

Thomas Denny? Yes – he’s the artist but the significance of that goes beyond the fact that he is one of Britain’s most eminent and respected stained glass artists, responsible for numerous windows in British churches. A browse of his website reveals the breadth and depth of his skill and the uniqueness of his style. The Tralee windows are typical – blazing with colour, filled with large and small figures and scenes that reveal themselves upon close inspection, rich and intricate, thoughtfully composed to draw the viewer into the subject of the panels.

Tralee Bay

You see, the Dennys came to Tralee as part of a British military expedition in the 1500s and the name is inextricably linked with the North Kerry area. Sir Edward Denny (1547 to 1599) was one of the architects and enforcers of the Plantation of Munster, and was rewarded with lands taken from the Earl of Desmond including Tralee Castle, a knighthood and the title of Governor of Kerry. Thomas is a direct descendent. 

Sir Edward Denny. Image used with the permission of the Victoria and Albert Museum

The Dennys stayed in Ireland for hundreds of years, branching out and enlarging their holdings. Eventually, along with many members of the Anglo-Irish landlord class, they lost their lands. In the case of Thomas’s grandfather, although he was a baronet he was also a clergyman, living the life of an impoverished cleric dedicated to his church. The move to England was related to his church service. In Ireland, such a history as this is a complicated legacy, and Thomas was eager to be part of the whole idea of a reconciliation window, donating his services to the project. Over twenty members of the Denny family came for the unveiling. This adds a rich and poignant dimension to the purpose of the window – reconciling the past with the present, and looking to the future. 

The father runs out to meet his returning son

Oh – and Thomas Denny’s soon-to-be newest window in Ireland? It’s going into St Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin, hopefully next spring.

Searching for Shapes: Shane O’Driscoll

I bought a Shane O’Driscoll rug!

Shane O’Driscoll is an Irish artist/designer. Ceadogán Rugs is based in Wexford and makes wonderful carpets and rugs using Irish designers. Take a look at their site – search by designer and you will see Shane and his rugs. Mine is the Swisha – I know now that it’s probably named for a piece of music. Above is a test piece for Swisha that ended up in Shane’s house. Look at that view!

Shane also happens to be my neighbour – well, close enough, just the other side of Mount Gabriel. He exhibits from time to time in the Blue House Gallery in Schull and I had met him there a couple of times: a man with a laid-back surfer-dude vibe. I love his prints and became curious about his art and his process. I also wanted to know more about my rug.

I visited him in his studio the other day. What I found was someone who is incredibly articulate about his vision, and generous in sharing that with me.

I was right about the surfing connection – surfing and skateboard culture, with its vibrant and modern designs and cool counter-culture energy was a huge influencer. He studied graphic design and worked as an art director for years in Dublin. A month-long career break was all it took to show him that he needed to go out on his own. He hasn’t looked back since.

The essence of Shane’s approach is to search for the elemental – the basic shapes that are hidden at the heart of everything we look at. He showed me a zine he produced while on a Paris residency – things that you and I wouldn’t even notice are grist to the mill for him.

Another collection of photographs is from wandering around the land on which he lives – the fields farmed by his wife’s family.

He said he approached designing rugs as partly a sculptural exercise, since it is three dimensional. Pile depth can vary and Ceadogán encouraged him to think outside the normal rug shape – although as it happens my own rug is square and has only one pile depth.

Shane’s work is all about balance. His motifs are often exact, geometrical, statically arranged on a flat background. But they bounce against each other and against elements that are more casual, less structured. Shane told me that the loose black brush stroke in Swisha – it’s called a gestural mark – grounds the design and creates a tension he likes against the sharp and disciplined edges of the blue and maroon elements. Perhaps the name Swisha, he said, also reflects the swoosh of the paint across the page (or the screen). It humanises the hard geometry, and in a way is a rebellion against all those years in design when precision was everything. He realised once it was finished that it wasn’t in fact finished and that’s when the orange went in – it’s like a piece of orange paper with torn edges. 

‘Like a Hurricane’ Image above courtesy of So Fine Art Editions

Shane works always with music playing and his titles are a calendar of what he’s been listening to. The music blocks out the tendency to analyse and over-intellectualise what he’s working on – he refers to a state of free flow – he finds it helps him focus and ‘centres his brain.’

Although prints are his main work, he has designed packaging, beer cans, water bottles (for the Irish Olympic team!), Easter egg boxes, coffee cups – all instantly recognisable with their signature shapes and vibrant colours.

Caroline Street mural, Courtesy of Backwater Artists

He’s done lots of street art and painting on buildings – next time you fly out of Cork Airport you will see this.


“The Wonder of Travel” is Cork’s newest street art mural, curated and created by Shane O’Driscoll and Peter Martin of ARDÚ Street Art. Picture: Darragh Kane. Courtesy Irish Examiner

It was a privilege and a pleasure to spend time with you, Shane. And thank you for my gorgeous rug. Now all I have to do is repaint the house to go with it.

More Books for Christmas!

The three books I am recommending today are ideal for the person in your life who loves West Cork and/or fine art. All three are by West Cork men and all three are self-published. Even though self-publishing is increasingly common, distribution is often monopolised by the large publishing houses, so I am delighted to have the opportunity to bring these three to your attention. 

Let’s start with Dennis Horgan’s latest – The Coast of Cork, A View from Above. Dennis has been incredibly generous in allowing us to use his photographs in the past, but we have never reviewed one of his books before. In the age of the drone, it’s easy to forget that only an aerial photograph can capture the most expansive views – a whole island, for example, or the sudden rise of a humpback whale, or a seascape feature that is too far from land to capture any other way.

Dennis is the real deal.  Leaning out of a plane flying at 150 miles an hour, kept safe only by a seat belt – it’s not for cowards. Add to this his mastery of photographic techniques necessitated by speed, varying light, changing focal lengths, wind and cloud and here you have a virtuoso photographer working at the height of his powers.

And he’s a Cork man through and through – his knowledge of and love for our coast is obvious. He knows these places on the ground and so he knows exactly what he wants to show us, and how he wants us to see it. You can find the book here, along with more of Dennis’s magnificent panoramas.

Our second book, Donal O’Sullivan: An Artist Remembered, is a revelation – why has nobody heard of this man? In jaw-dropping image after image, Paul Finucane and Brendan Lyons reveal the forgotten genius of O’Sullivan, whose preferred media, pastels and pencil, glow out from these pages. 

We learn about his students activism – he was a leader in reforming the old-fashioned and under-resourced College of Art, still languishing in basement rooms in Kildare street in the late 60s, with a curriculum dictated by civil servants (no life drawing, use those plaster casts!). Later, he was a beloved teacher in Dun Laoghaire, a friend and mentor to many. 

There are several descriptions of his chaotic studio. It sounded much like that of one of his inspirations, Francis Bacon, now reproduced in the Hugh Lane Gallery. He died by suicide when he was only 46, mourned by the family who loved and supported him through his later addiction battles, and those in the art world who remembered him as gentle, kind, encouraging, and fiercely individual.

A piece in the Irish Times says, he had gone against the expressionism that was fashionable in Irish art circles at the time, trading instead in powerful, elegant and melancholy figurative art that often discomfited its viewers. That same piece has a video that shows many, many of his works, carefully preserved by his sister, Marie. There are many self-portraits – my lead image is a detail from one. And many nudes, despite the best efforts of those 1960s civil servants.

Finucane and Lyons, who also mounted a retrospective exhibition in September at Union Hall’s respected Cnoc Building Community Arts Centre, deserve all our thanks for rescuing this extraordinary artist from obscurity. You can purchase your own copy here.

Finally, a book that, according to its writer, has been 18 years in the making, deals with a topic dear to my own heart. This Is The Mizen, by John D’Alton, delves into the history and prehistory of the Mizen Peninsula, copiously illustrated by John’s own photographs as well as historical images. 

John, a former journalist and professional photographer, loves a moody landscape and his photographs often highlight a building or landscape lit by a setting sun. He has produced two previous books about West Cork (see here for example), using his own images.

But this is not primarily a picture book, but rather an extended essay on the history of the Mizen Peninsula, from the earliest times. Regular readers might recognise the partial fort above – I wrote about it here and here. Don’t expect a turgid academic treatise: John has done his homework, and combines that with his own trenchant opinions, and a take-no-prisoners approach, to provide a highly readable account of this area. The book is available at local bookstores, such as the lovely Worm Books, or at https://www.buythebook.ie/product/this-is-the-mizen/

Above, Whiddy Island from Dennis Horgan’s The Coast of Cork

A Powerhouse for Nature – Sonia Caldwell and Kilcoe Studios

I have written once before about Sonia Caldwell of Kilcoe Studios. That was eight years ago. In a post titled Kilcoe Studios – Dedication and Passion, I showed you her production of beautiful botanical art calendars and notecards, and gave you a glimpse of her passion for sculpture.

Since then, Sonia has emerged in West Cork as a true champion for heritage and nature, on top of continuing to develop her business and her personal sculpting practice. After a residency at Uillinn, she held a solo show there last month, mainly featuring her sculpture.

Sonia works in limestone, clay and natural materials such as mosses and twigs. Her work has an ethereal quality, explained by her personal spirituality. Her figures, small and large, are seeking to find their path, or answers to their questions. 

They ponder an empty church, march along a pilgrim route carrying their burdens, or gaze into the distance mulling over some otherworldly mystery. 

The launch of the exhibition was haunting. Sonia and singers, directed by Susan Nares, entered singing: chanting, rather, in a slightly Gregorian way, in English and Irish. 

That’s the fine art side of Sonia. But her other passion is for the natural world and for all those heritage crafts that will die, if people like her don’t learn, nurture and revive them. She has opened a shop in Ballydehob, where she sells her own artwork, and items by others made from all natural materials. 

The shop is where she also hosts her workshops – often facilitated by herself and occasionally  by others. All the workshops are designed to get us engaging with heritage crafts and materials sourced from the fields, hedges and water around us. And they are great fun!

Just in the past year in that shop I have learned to make a basket from brambles (yes, don’t worry, de-thorned) – that’s my friend Julia splitting a long bramble above. I have made an autumn sculpture (“don’t call it a wreath!”) and a Christmas wreath, both facilitated by the wonderful Liz O’Leary and from foraged materials.

And I have gone on two foraging walks. The latest walk was last weekend, and it featured my first ever cup of nettle tea (delish!) and a picnic on the banks of a river with crackers and cake made from various gleanings and flavourings  – toasted Wood Avens seeds anyone?

Sonia has also single-handedly revived Wren Day (also known as St Stephen’s Day in Ireland and Boxing Day abroad) in Ballydehob and taught us how to make the traditional rush hats worn by the Wren Boys. See Robert’s post The Wran for more on this unique Irish tradition – he was an enthusiastic participant.

All towns and villages deserve a person like Sonia – the person who won’t let the traditions die and who encourages the rest of us to look around us and really see what the land has to offer. We are lucky she chose West Cork as the place to nurture her own unique and mighty talent and to draw the occasional spark of creativity from the rest of us.

Stone Mad, Re-Issued

Yesterday, in a ceremony in the Cork Public Museum, Mercier Press launched a re-issued Stone Mad, by Seamus Murphy. This year is the 50th anniversary of Seamus’s death, in 1975. The book is also the One City One Book choice of the Cork City Library, as part of the 2025 Cork World Book Fest taking place all this week in venues across Cork.

I attended the launch in the Museum, in Fitzgerald Park, home of several sculptures by Seamus, including this one of De Valera, above. Long-time readers will remember our own Rock Art Exhibition in the same building ten years ago – somehow apt that it featured the prehistoric version of the stone carving tradition we were celebrating yesterday. 

The book was officially launched by the poet Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, about whom I wrote here. She had known him in the old days in Cork, and her’s was a wonderful, evocative, beautifully written summary of Seamus and his book. She finished with words that resonated with everyone in the room (and it was packed!) – I paraphrase it as: Read this book again. And afterwards, go and wander around Cork. You will never look at it the same way again.

Eoghan Daltun, author of An Irish Atlantic Rain Forest, was there too. Besides a passionate conservationist, he is a skilled sculptural restorer, and was responsible from rescuing Dreamline from weather and lichen damage a couple of years ago. Standing within the display of carvings and tools and images, all carefully set up by the Museum team led by Curator Dan Breen, Eoghan talked us through what was involved in carving in stone and, many years later, restoring the artwork. 

I was also very pleased to meet Ken Thompson, the stone carver who finished off lettering on Seamus’s headstones, after his death, and who carved many monuments I have encountered in Cork and elsewhere, including the inspirational memorial to the Victims of the Air India tragedy in Ahakista, below. 

Seamus Murphy is acknowledged as one of Ireland’s best stone carvers, and an icon of the 20th century Cork cultural scene. His work can be seen all over Ireland, but especially in an around Cork. If you are not that familiar with his output, the documentary Seamus Murphy A Quiet Revolution is a great introduction to his life and work.

Stone Mad has been a favourite on our shelves as long as Robert and I have had a joint library. We own a couple of copies, including a hardback of the second edition, signed by Seamus and with illustrations by William Harrington. It’s an evocative summation of his life as a ‘stoney’, the men with whom he worked, and the craft they honed together. It has become iconic, as much for its on-the-ground and entertaining picture of life in a Cork stone yard as for its musings on stone carving as an art, from medieval times to the present day. For some extracts, see my post, Building a Stone Wall.

The illustrations by William Harrington, pen and ink sketches, capture the work, the camaraderie of pub life after a hard day’s work, but also includes a sensitively drawn portrait of Seamus. 

If you don’t have a copy of Stone Mad, do get one – it deserves a place in your library. I will leave the last word to Ken Thompson, from the documentary I link to above. Ken inherited Seamus’s tools (below) – most of them look surprisingly delicate for the work they do, don’t they?

Ken says, Now he’s been dead for 40 years, but I see his work in churches all the time. His work is shining out. It’s still a beacon. It still speaks.

Flail, by Debbie Godsell

It’s not often an art exhibition has me running to my word processor to get a post out, but this one did it for me! On the surface, this is a quirky, amusing, thought-provoking, installation about the annual Harvest Festival, as practised in the autumn in Church of Ireland communities all over Ireland. Except it’s so much more than that. It’s titled Flail, and it’s on right now at Uillinn.

Debbie Godsell has taken the idea of the harvest festival and the communities that celebrate it, and turned it into a personal exploration of her own experience with it, as a child growing up in the C of I, and as a photographer recording the custom of decorating churches. In Ireland, this is a custom unique to the Protestant church – the minority religion. As such, there’s a strangeness to it when viewed by someone who grew up Catholic. Not strange in the sense of peculiar, but in the sense of unknown, slightly other-worldly, why-have-I-never-known-about-this?

But yes, it is quirky and amusing. Just take a look at these heads – they are the first thing you notice when you come in, titled ‘Ancestors’. Made from all kinds of found materials, some represent real people (hello, Great-Aunt Molly!) although most are simply heads – a bit like you might find on a scarecrow out in the fields around harvest time.

But after the first encounter you realise that this also of course, is the thought-provoking part of this exhibition Now you notice that they are on sticks, mirroring perhaps the heads on pikes that seemed to spell the end on many rebellions against English rule down through the centuries. In her notes, Godsell states:

Here, the heads take on an unsettling childlike quality, drawing from elements of folk drama and ritual. Rudimentary in form, they are a fusion of figures from Irish history and the artist’s own imagined lineage. Blurring the line between historical facts and personal mythology, the work interrogates themes of memory, identity and inherited trauma, challenging how history is constructed and remembered.

What does it mean, in Ireland, to be part of a minority religion? What has it meant in the past, and now? What if that religion was perceived to track closely with class, and land ownership, and unionist sympathies? 

We pride ourselves, in Ireland, now, on being a pluralistic and non-sectarian society. But if that is true at all, it is only recently so. The Ireland I grew up in – in the 50s and 60s – was deeply sectarian. Protestants and Catholics rarely mixed and we were forbidden, on pain of sin, to enter each other’s churches. We were educated separately, played some different sports (Anyone for lacrosse? How about men’s hockey?), sounded different, went to separate Brownie troupes, studied different curricula at school . . .

This exhibition explores the harvest-related parts of that separateness, but the opening, in which Debbie Godsell was interviewed by art critic Cristín Leach, also featured a discussion on folklore and a hymn by Cristín!

Cristín has said that Flail is ‘complicated territory’ for her and the hymn, Harvesting History, sprang almost spontaneously from engaging with the first Flail exhibition. It has been beautifully set to music by Susan Nares, and the West Cork Choral Singers presented it at the opening. Here’s a snippet.

I was particularly fascinated by the folklore discussion. As Roaringwater Journal readers know, we have used the Duchas/Schools Folklore Collection extensively over the years. One particularly important piece of research for me was to look at what it had to say about the Reverend Fisher – Saint and/or Souper of Toormore. What I found was a little shocking and it opened my eyes to an aspect of this wonderful resource that I had never previously considered – the decidedly sectarian nature of the collections. While some Protestant National Schools did participate in the School’s Collection of 1937/38, Protestants are very under-represented as informants. See this excellent article from History Ireland for more on this*.

Cristín and Debbie talked about the prevailing view of Protestants as seen in the overwhelmingly Catholic responses in the Collection – and it wasn’t a pretty picture. As I discovered with Fisher, and as Amanda has discovered with Holy Wells Folklore, the Protestants are basically blamed for anything misfortunate or discreditable – some examples here, and here and here. 

Go see this exhibition if you can. It’s fascinating, but more than that, it’s important. We are still trying to come to grips with our history, in Ireland. Art like this helps immeasurably.

* A ‘Protestant folk’? Author(s): Deirdre Nuttall and Críostóir MacCarthaigh Source: History Ireland , Vol. 25, No. 5 (September–October 2017), pp. 48-51 Published by: Wordwell Ltd. Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/90014607