Galway Advertiser 1993/1993_01_21/GA_21011993_E1_021.pdf 

Extracted text

THAT'S

GA'S GUIDE TO GOINGS ON AND GOING OUT

EOTERTA1MENT
- they have three girls - and moved down to the West. She tried to keep up her painting but the demands of a young family meant that she didn't have much time to devote to it. But gradually, as the family grew up, she returned to art, doing a fine portrait of Siobhan MacKenna that Tom Ken ny sold. Since 1989 Miriam had been working regularly on her portraits and her excellent study of Sonny Molloy, in charcoal and graphite, in this exhibition is a superb example of her ability to depict character. PAMELA O'CONNELL has three paintings in the exhibition - "Antique S h i p " , " G l e n l o " and " F r o m Raven Terrace" (pictured here). Born in Dublin, she did Social Science at U . C D . and also attended night classes at the National College of Art. After her marriage - her husband is now a den tist in Galway - she and her husband moved to Kent in England where she continued her interest in art, attending art classes in the town where she was living. During the years that followed she found her energies more than occupied by the raising of a young family. Her move to Galway coincided with a renewed burst of energy on the art front and she began studying under the careful eye of Derek Biddulph. She also took a course in wood-working, which she says she loves, at the Tech on Fr. Grif fin Road. For the last three years Pamela has been atten ding the Access Course - an initiative begun a few years ago for older students that leads to a diploma - offered by the Regional Technical College where she has studied painting under the tuition of Hugh McCormick and Gerardine Quinn. As an artist Pamela has concentrated on people and landscapes, using oils but more recently acrylic on canvas. While initially drawn to a more realistic manner, lately she has begun experimenting with a more abstract approach which she feels is a sign of increasing confidence and maturity. Apart from the current "Aspects of Galway" exhibition, she has exhibited in the Ossian Gallery in Dublin and the Armory Arts Centre, also in Dublin, where the painting she entered for RTE's "Live At T h r e e " won first prize in the West of Ireland entries. When I asked her why she painted, her answer was a sim ple one: " I just love to paint."

PORTRAITS OF (AND SOMETIMES BY!) THE ARTIST
When I was talking to Tom Kenny about MIRIAM SILKE he told me a story that would delight the heart of any artist. Some years ago Miriam had done a portrait of Samuel Beckett which, at the time of the story, was hanging in the first floor above the Gallery. Tom had noticed a distinguished looking gentleman wandering through the Gallery and upstairs. Eventually he came downstairs and asked Tom who had done the portrait of Beckett. Tom told him, and the man said it was one of the most remarkable studies of the late playwright he'd ever seen. And who was the mysterious admirer? It was John Calder, Beckett's long-time friend and publisher. High praise indeed! Miriam Silke was born in Ennis and she told me her biggest influence was undoubtedly her mother who she remembers as always painting. " W e didn't have any art in school, so she taught me and the nine other children in the family at h o m e . " There was a strong artistic bent in her mother's family. One of her mother's cousins, Francis O'Donoghue, was a very talented young man, a friend of the noted Irish artist William Orpen, and one of the youngest artists ever to be accepted into the Royal Hibernian Academy. Tragically he was killed in an accident in Dublin when he was only twenty-one, but the family still has a number of drawings he did of his mother. Perhaps it was her cousin's exquisite portraits that gave Miriam her own fascination with peo ple's faces, but she told me that even as a young girl attending Mass she was drawn to the faces she would notice in the dim light of the Church. While she was working at Shannon Airport, Miriam at tended art classes in Limerick at night for about two years. Later, when she moved to Dublin, she attended night classes at the National College of Art for six months. Next Miriam went to Italy where she got a job as an au pair with a Italian family, which also in volved teaching English to the parents. The father was a Military Attache in the Diplomatic Corps and he and his family were about to be sent to Yugoslavia. Miriam did drawings of the children and the parents that so impressed her employer he sent her to Rome to study art for five months. Her professor wanted her to stay on for the three year course and concentrate on portraiture. "But I was young and three years sounded like a long t i m e " , she says. Returning to Ireland she married a Gal way man

TE C E H U N E B N A TE K Y GLY"P T O G W "FT E W R T XT R HI IO I T H E N N AE , A C LR S ES F A A EUS L Y AR , O F R R K O M AH O O AS S F T R S LG A T I T V I N I N D WK I GW OI R N N G A A L N E A J N B A B N B R . G RE DEAT A A S S O M H E N R H , A I OK E U U E R D T ENR G HD N D BNE EAT RD E M D . B T AE U I A DN T T L S FT E W O EUS AR O F R R K O M AN B UE O M R F B U W S TES S G T H O E A T U E A WE N L N GS T H O E L W CP O G A AS R O F A Y RS A L W T I T R R Y T ME TR ON M C TS W E E A D O A K H E W I IP T H A . I E E JF O NL K E F C E ' NL O

MIRIAM SILKE

SONNY MOLLOY

PAMELA O'CONNELL

'FROM RAVEN TERRACE'

CONTINUED PAGE 26

ND S I

W

K
" O DGT G ON H I LTE F A K ETRRC" R VW D EE E I PU D R D T S LS I Y AE , A E T , N W AND NS E S OLD GL A AWY

SULTANS OF PING EC. FOR SETANTA

A POEM FOR MICHAEL D.