See an insider’s view of West Cork in the Crawford Gallery

THE late Michael Sheehan returned to his native West Cork at the age of 82, after a lifetime of working on cargo boats and travelling around the world. An impulse to paint seized him and in just four years, until his death in 1996, Sheehan produced a series of naïve oil paintings depicting local historical events and the raw beauty of his birthplace, the Beara peninsula.

Local restaurateur Tony Lowes has gifted one of Michael’s paintings, ‘Eskivaude’, to the Crawford Gallery in Cork, and it now hangs in the Curator’s choice exhibition.

Lowes, an American who came to Ireland in 1963 and lives in Eyeries, formed a friendship with Sheehan in his last years.