Burren Country

by Paul Clements

  The Flaggy Shore © Trevor Ferris

  12

  The Burren Painters

  Those who dwell among the beauties and mysteries of the earth are never alone or weary of life.

  Rachel Carson, The Sea Around Us

  From Donegal to Cork, the west coast of Ireland is a place of wild seas, magnificent scenery, and dramatic cliffs and rocks. Since the seventeenth century, landscape painters have been drawn irresistibly to it for the majesty and pageantry of its western skies, the dreamy silences, the grandiloquence of the light and its air of mystery. They have captured the terrain in its textual and tonal quality. Some of Ireland’s best-known painters such as Alexander Williams, Paul Henry and Charles Lamb preferred the set pieces of Killary Harbour, Achill Island or Connemara with its dramatic mountain ranges where they adopted a technique of what become known as ‘simple elegance’.

  Other painters, including John Luke with his precise stylised technique, settled for Mayo. Sligo shaped the artistic vision of Jack B. Yeats. Some chose the hills of Donegal to produce their sweeping brushstrokes of clouds and luminous skies and many picked Killarney with its fusion of mountains and lakes. This distinctive Irish school of painting that included James Humbert Craig alluded to the romantic idealism of the west of Ireland which provided a powerful stimulus for their imagination. In their vast canvases there is a strong feeling of light, air and spaciousness, and many of their works have a sense of stillness as well as a feeling of wildness and loneliness. Some made their homes and reputations in the west, filling their sketchbooks and producing memorable works of artistic gravitas.

  With their lower profile, the Burren hills lack the iconographic picturesqueness, triangular symmetry and drama of some of Clare’s neighbours that are associated with the west. They are on a smaller, less exalted, mountain scale. There are few rivers to paint and no tumbling waterfalls or romantic lakes for artists to give an imaginative response to or with which to flirt; yet the physical landscape makes a striking first impact. It has enticed painters of different outlooks and techniques for the constantly changing sky and seascapes, the towering cloudscapes, the world of moving shadows across the hills and fresh minted landscape brought about by the weather patterns. There is so much scope with the southern shore of Galway Bay and a scenic maze of islands, headlands, tidal creeks and sandy bays just a bravura brush stroke away.

  In terms of the landscape, little has changed in hundreds of years. This is partly the attraction for the painter. The visual and aesthetic value is strong. The dynamic light is much as it always was. The painters who come to the Burren are enchanted by the crystal clear light shining through the clouds, the exciting atmospheric conditions, and the expanse of sea and sky together with the vaporous mist. They also love the overwhelming sense of peace and distilled calm. The skies in particular are a material part of their work and a keynote element. More than anywhere else in the west, painters here get a lot of sky for their money.

  It is a stunning landscape to enliven their compositions. It has an emotive power: stimulating, strong, savage and often primitive. There is an agelessness and timelessness through the antiquity of the stones and the walls that appeals to their painterly eyes. The dancing waves are another attraction. The Burren is underpopulated and unspoilt by industrialisation. There are no huge housing developments, no sprawling estates on the edges of its towns. The exposed limestone gives it character and liveliness. It is what many look for when painting and seeps deep into their consciousness. The greyness pervades their work and is inherent in many of their landscapes.

  Although it is a place that is high on the emotional radar of artists, it does not lend itself to as figurative an approach as other western shores. The Burren eludes some of them; they pack their bags and quickly move on. Not all painters find that emotional instant effect. They have difficulty capturing the actuality of it, engaging with or interpreting its mood, so they settle elsewhere for what they see as more pleasing vistas. It is no place for the realist painter. Some of those who visit it are not receptive to its strange atmosphere. There are no bogs or people leading donkeys with peat-filled panniers across fields. So much of the visual representation of the west of Ireland’s rural landscape has produced cliché and stereotype but the Burren’s romantic glamour of indistinctness is not to everyone’s taste.

  Over the years it has nonetheless attracted the imaginative energy of artists of the calibre of Robert Gregory (the subject of W. B. Yeats’ poem ‘An Irish Airman Foresees his Death’), Barrie Cooke, Anne Madden, Brian Bourke, and the Donegal-based painter Derek Hill who died in July 2000. They developed a liking for the region, spending in some cases a considerable amount of time in the area and the Burren became an important location in their work. Some adopted a light touch in their portrayal of the rock and limestone hills; others produced work redolent of a poetic style with an apparent calmness, while a few chose to explore with vibrant colours and free brush strokes.

  In the brightly lit attic of his house hidden down an alleyway in Ballyvaughan, Manus Walsh is surrounded by scores of examples of his artwork – some complete, others half-finished, and a few at the artistic incubation stage. When he first came to New Quay on the Flaggy Shore in the summer of 1975 Manus was immediately captivated by the mystery of the Burren. Its uniqueness appealed to him, allied to the fact that it was completely different to anywhere else that he had been. The challenge was to capture, through his imagination, its forbidding and lonely nature.

  He settled in Ballyvaughan in 1976 and since then has painted the Burren from every conceivable angle, tapping into its rhythms and moods. As he walks the roads his eyes are attuned to small details and odd shapes that he sees and then sketches: an isolated tree or peculiar boulder, the horizontal line of a stone wall, or a turlough, are all scenes that might normally be overlooked.

  ‘At the start I didn’t know anything about the place,’ he admits over a coffee. ‘But I was a good walker and used to go into the Wicklow Mountains nearly every weekend. So when I came down here I began exploring it. I just took to it and its different lights, although it did take a while as I was immersed in setting up an enamelling business. I went out with my binoculars, sketchbook and flask of tea and walked every inch of the place. Living here all the time with kids, I just fell in love with it. I took up cycling and got to know the back roads which are a great way to see and feel the place. The traffic gets heavy in the summer but when you know the quiet roads such as the Caher Valley, it’s easier to stop and take in the landscape.’

  Manus is a multi-talented artist who is self-taught. He uses acrylics, collages, oils, watercolours, gouache, chalk and glass. Worktables in his studio are crammed with jars of burnt umber and burnt sienna, yellow ochre, cobalt blue, ultramarine, Payne’s grey, Naples deep yellow and sap green. He talks about the evolution of his paintings and his technique.

  ‘Every time I sit down with a blank piece of paper I tend to find that my work unravels as I go along. A few times, of course, it doesn’t work out but the great thing about acrylics is that you can go over it straightaway. I’ve come to the end of paintings sometimes and said to myself this isn’t working and I start again and over-paint, which lots of painters do. So it evolves on the canvas or the paper. The collages are the black and white ones, which are quite dramatic. I go back to them from time to time as it’s a new way of showing the landscape. I am very aware of the colours all the time and my main ones are greens, browns and saffron.’

  With their shadowy blurs and cloud-filled skies, his paintings have a melodramatic impact with long views, closeups, or moonlit night. You have to look closely into his work to see what is there. Like many good paintings the longer you look at them the more you see. But Manus does not attempt a precise reproduction of the landscape and is not aiming for an accurate topographical view. In keeping with the spirit of the place, the result is a style that he calls ‘semi-abstract impressionism’. His work reflects the stark, stratified nature of the hills at
night and he has produced a series on the lunar landscape – the Burren moon – which has become a staple theme and crucial part of his pictorial architecture.

  ‘The moon features quite a lot in my work because it is so dramatic especially over Moneen and Aillwee mountains where it looks huge. I often laugh because people say it’s like a Hollywood moon. It seems as though someone is behind the mountain pulling it up like a hydraulic moon or sometimes it even looks as if it’s on a piece of string. The moon is a focal point in the painting shining on the turloughs which helps bring the viewer into the work.

  ‘There is drama in the Burren with the moon and on bright nights the rocks become silvered. There are so many moods but when you are up close it’s quite hard to capture it because it’s almost abstract already with the rock shape. You could go crazy trying to capture it but it’s the rhythm of the landscape I try to portray. I come back and go straight into the acrylics because I find them immediate while the other drying agents take a good deal of time to dry. I also use quite a stiff brush for the acrylics which helps.’

  One of the important aspects of a painter’s life, he says, is to be ready for sudden movements in the weather. The incessant changes in the light and moods have to be caught – whether it is the sheen on the limestone after rain, the glittering sun, the half, or crescent, moon. Like a chef, he gathers his ingredients, mixing them bit by bit in dabs and splashes on to his canvas cooking up a visual alchemy and stirring his creative spirit. From his palette he creates, by a synthesis of different elements, the overall feeling rather than a specific place. Never simply accepting what is there, he makes up his own skies.

  ‘The light is one of the key things and trying to capture that is an ongoing battle. The changes of light are amazing as the hills turn pink and purple. I remember the poet John O’Donohue stopping me in the middle of the street about six months before he died in 2008. He said that he’d seen my paintings and was amazed as he never thought there was blue in the Burren. He was really taken by that aspect of the blueness which is not very obvious. The colours are seasonal with the tan and saffron in the winter. In June the ground gets burnt with the hot weather.’

  It is, he concedes, a challenging place to interpret, which is the reason why many painters do not stay long. Manus has produced a series of landscapes with horizontal lines, full of ghosts and often devoid of colour.

  ‘It certainly is a difficult landscape to interpret and you have to be here a long time to try to get underneath the skin of it. It looks barren with the rocks but if you look in between then it’s quite fertile with trees and bushes, which make it almost abstract already with those tortured shapes. Seascapes are straightforward because it’s a rocky coast but when you get into the interior with the terracing it’s harder.’

  We walk around his house and he shows me his framed paintings hanging on walls. ‘You can see in this Burren one that I do a kind of stippling effect which gives the rhythm of the rocks and walls. It brings liveliness to the painting with blue skies and spots of green. I start a number of paintings at the same time, then leave one aside and come back to it. I put it down on the floor and have a look at it later so it goes in layers and I could go back to it five or six times before I get the finished piece.’

  I ask about specific locations in his work but he mostly does not put place names in the title. They tend to be generic with such titles as ‘Burren Pastures’, ‘Black Night, Misty Burren’, ‘Burren Green & Grey’, or ‘Turlough Behind the Hill’.

  ‘Most times it’s not an exact place, just my own interpretation rather than the particular. I could put names on the titles but I don’t – it wouldn’t be factual as they aren’t specific places so it would be incorrect to call them, for example, Mullaghmore or Moneen. Tom Kenny in Galway laughs at me and says you’ll have to come up with some new titles such as ‘Burren in the morning’, ‘Burren in the evening’, ‘Burren at summer time’ … so getting a name that alludes to the landscape in its different moods is difficult. Even people who know the Burren well couldn’t identify the locations. They like to have a name sometimes if it’s a particular painting that they like and they ask: “Do I know this place? Is that up the back of Gleninsheen?” I like keeping them guessing.’

  Manus looks perplexed when I ask about the number of paintings he has done of the Burren and seems to have lost count. ‘I’ve never kept a record and it’s hard to quantify it but I’ve been exhibiting for more than thirty-four years.’

  His first one man show was in Dublin in 1967. We calculate that he has produced at least 700 Burren paintings, perhaps even more than this. In 2010, when he was seventy, he held a major exhibition ‘As I Walked Out’ in Kenny’s Gallery.

  ‘You try to do your very best for each one and set yourself a standard, hoping that people will say this is your best exhibition yet. It’s a personal thing as I’m not thinking of anything else but the painting at the time that I’m working on as it’s very absorbing. Some people who follow my exhibitions say there’s a lot more colour in recent years, so they’ve seen a progression but I mightn’t notice it myself. I think most artists get more skilful over the years as it is a craft to be learned using the materials to suit your needs.’

  Manus’ favourite Burren location is Bishopsquarter beach which for him has a tranquil feel. ‘There are tremendous contrasts in the place in the summer and winter. I used to swim at Bishopsquarter every evening and it is highly atmospheric. I love the peace of it off season, and especially when you get the sun it is a quiet place until the Brent geese arrive in the autumn. When I’m on my bike I like to get a good cycle up Ballyallaban hill, or around Black Head, up the Caher Valley or down to Carron. It is a great mixture.’

  Like much of the work of west of Ireland painters, there is a stillness and pellucid softness about his Burren canvases. But as a contrast, Manus has also painted abroad. He has spent time in Spain, Cuba, France, Morocco and Chile and this experience has had a deep effect on his work, producing an infusion of a dance of colours. His Galway exhibition included work from Chile and Spain, as well from the souks of the Moroccan towns of Tétouan and Chefchaouen. Tétouan is a whitewashed town hidden between the Mediterranean and the Rif region. Largely forgotten by tourists, it was once the makeshift capital of Spanish Morocco and, along with Chefchaouen, has provided Manus with new vistas to produce eye-catching watercolours.

  ‘I’ve been going to Spain since 2001 although it all goes back to the days of George Campbell who was my mentor in the 1960s and was a huge influence on my work. He was from Arklow and later went to live in Belfast. I met him through my stained-glass work and he encouraged me to come to Spain so I went out and stayed for a couple of months with him. Ever since then I’ve kept up that relationship with Spain. I go there in the winter to get away from the severity of the weather here. It’s a question of moving from the rocks to the olives which you find there in the huge Andalusian fields and it is an amazing difference.

  ‘What I enjoy is the total contrast with the Burren. In Valparaiso I painted cityscapes and the white villages of Spain. These are totally different colours and the light too is a great change. People said it brought more colour to my work here although I wouldn’t really notice it but maybe your mood lifts with the stronger sun and brighter days. One of the big differences is the fact that in the Burren the landscape I paint is horizontal with the terraces and stone walls as it is a stratified landscape whereas in Spain it is vertical.’

  Manus points out several of his Valparaiso works hanging on his walls which have an exuberance not found in his Burren paintings and which in some cases embrace the fiery end of the red-orange colour spectrum. His Spanish artwork is populated with figures while his Burren works are mostly, but not always, bereft of people.

  In his early days working in stained glass he produced five windows in Galway Cathedral and in 2003 made a much-loved memorial window dedicated to Michael Green in St John the Baptist Church in Ballyvaughan. Manus comes from an artistic
pedigree. His grandfather was the novelist and short story writer Maurice Walsh who was born at Ballydonoghue near Listowel in County Kerry in 1879. He worked for Customs and Excise in 1901, serving mostly in the Scottish highlands which gave him the settings for many stories. In 1922 he transferred to the Irish customs service in Dublin and began his fiction.

  ‘I was in my teens and early twenties when he was writing and he was very encouraging to me as I was artistic and played music. He had a particular grá or liking for me.’

  Before I leave, Manus shows me a collection of his grandfather’s books on his shelves that include hardback first editions in dust wrappers as well as paperbacks. Unlike his grandson, he did give specific titles to his work although there are nomenclatural echoes of Manus’ paintings in some: While Rivers Run, Danger Under the Moon and Green Rushes which contains ‘The Quiet Man’ story on which John Ford based his famous film in 1952.

  ‘The novels have been reprinted and have been out of fashion a bit but he wrote some very good books. He had a prolific output of adventure stories often with historical settings and his writing pleased millions of readers in Ireland, Britain and the United States.’

  In a different artistic medium, Manus’ work too is constantly sought after and is in private collections in many countries around the world. And even after thirty-five years of prolonged exposure to the limestone along with quiet and contemplative exploration of the rhythms of the Burren’s back roads and hideaways, he still finds new themes and subjects to paint.

  ‘I suppose there is a danger that you could run out of ideas here and you could become bogged down as a Burren painter but I have done quite a bit of work abroad which keeps it fresh. I brought up my family here and at the time I fell into it and it became my home. Even though I was born and bred in Stillorgan, I have no inclination ever to go back to Dublin.’