Living Island

ROSIE MCGURRAN OUTLINES THE EVOLUTION OF THE INISHLACKEN PROJECT, CELEBRATING ITS TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY THIS YEAR.

Mick O’Dea giving a painting demonstration, 2014; photograph courtesy Rosie McGurran. Michael Doherty surveying his work, 2018; photograph courtesy Rosie McGurran.

AFTER READING THREE men on an island by James MacIntyre in 2000, I was inspired by his illustrated story of a summer spent on the small living island of Inishlacken in 1951. He travelled there with fellow artist, George Campbell, on the invitation of their friend and colleague, Gerard Dillon. The three men spent their days drawing and painting, being chased by geese, rowing to Roundstone village for supplies, taking a few pints in the pub and making friends. Their presence on the island was quotidian; painters have long visited the west, particularly Roundstone. Fanfares are few – artists are part of life there. The final pages of the book stopped me in my tracks. Years later, George Campbell and Gerard Dillon had died young, possibly with paintings in their heads. The sadness gave way to an overwhelming sense that I should put artists back on that island. I knew no one locally and had a studio and career in Belfast.

In June of that year, I was invited to participate in an artists’ residency in Roundstone. I had been visiting the area since my art college days, unaware of its significance in Irish art history. The two weeks of the residency gave way to further weeks in a rented apartment, and I was quietly becoming anchored in the village. I returned to my home in Belfast, bought a car and packed up my belongings in September. I had secured a lease on the apartment for the winter; I only expected to stay a few months. A small house overlooking the harbour then became my home. The water would reflect on the bedroom ceiling in the mornings; I often felt like I was on a boat.

It is only fitting that an artist should want to live in a beautiful place. The natural and built environments of Roundstone and Inishlacken hold many obvious visual delights and other concerns lying beneath the surface. Sitting at the foot of Errisbeg Mountain, overseeing the changing light on the Twelve Bens and Bertraboy Bay, the village is steeped in history, but the constant factor is its beauty. The sun rises behind Inishnee island – at shouting distance in a strong wind – and sets behind the hill, often offering up mackerel skies and a strange low light that illuminates the windows of homes on Inishnee. On such occasions, the peculiar light casts the fields there in bright golden brilliance, like a Hollywood film set. In Autumn and late summer, the houses on the village street cast long shadows with streaks of sunlight jabbing over the road into the harbour. These fascinations for light and colour must have also tantalised many other artists before me.

Inishlacken continued to fascinate me, as it sat on its rocky perch waiting for artists to visit. In 2001, I established ‘The Inishlacken Project’, a one-day visit with a few painters and supporters, which eventually became an annual week-long residency with artists spending long days and often nights on the island. From a modest start, over two hundred artists have since visited during that mid-summer week. The summer solstice gives optimum time for working in daylight. We have often camped out to watch the bonfires light up on the mainland on St John’s Eve, when the sun never really sets. Artists have worked there in many different art forms, including painting, drawing, performance, photography, sculpture, poetry and musical composition.

The island is small – one mile long and three quarters of a mile wide. From Errisbeg, the manmade walls and fields make it look like a giant patchwork quilt, floating in the sea. The island was inhabited until the early sixties. The boreen that circles the island is subsumed by bog and rocks in places. A water tower sits on the rocky highest part of the island, where a broken windmill and overgrown reservoir point to a long-abandoned water system, which was revolutionary in its time. Looking due north from that point, potato drill scars run along fields towards the schoolhouse and small cottage where Gerard Dillon had lived. The grass gives way to the white sand of the beach; a line of stones, maybe once a wall, bejewel the sandy height of a shell midden. It is said that the former landlord’s daughter is buried there. Another notable soul was a Luftwaffe pilot, whose body washed up on the island. He was eventually repatriated by his family after the war. This is all framed by the Twelve Bens in the distance. These mountains change shape and colour constantly, a vexation for many artists or a challenge to some.

The painter Mick O’Dea has long been a temporary islander with us. The beach is one of his main subjects and often he turns his back on the obvious view of the mountains to examine the sand and rocks. He has produced an extensive collection of Inishlacken landscapes, which often feature other artists in the composition. English artist Caroline Wright has set her performance works on the beaches and in the water documenting and presenting her responses in video and drawing. Belfast architect and artist Michael Doherty holds a fervent commitment to plein air drawing and painting; he is prolific and never wastes a moment. Dublin artists Una Sealy and Dorothy Smith have approached the subject of left behind houses and their contents, while also working directly from the landscape. After years of absorbing the island landscape for studio work, I have recently embraced the practice of plein air painting, which has sharpened up my drawing and observation skills.

As a group, we have exhibited at Galway Arts Centre, the Linen Hall Library and the Gerard Dillon Gallery in Belfast, Áras Éanna on Inis Oírr, The Red House Arts Center, New York, Clifden Arts Festival and on Inishlacken itself for Culture Night. No one could have foreseen the circumstances and events of annus pandemicus 2020. The pandemic almost put a halt to the annual gathering but in September 2020, a small window opened when a group could go there. The island was perfect for social distancing and the weather held for a few days of much needed island isolation, breaking the months of imposed isolation we had all lived through. The further lockdowns make this year’s ‘Inishlacken Project’ seem like an aspirational dream. We should have been celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the project with another exhibition in Syracuse, but hopefully we will be able to mark it next year. Michael Doherty called me to suggest a twenty first commemoration instead, to celebrate “... a coming of age”, he said.