These colourful hares are raising money for a great cause

Some of Ireland’s top artists have painted hares for an auction in aid of the Jack and Jill Foundation, writes Ellie O’Byrne

THE Jack and Jill Foundation’s colourful ‘Hares on the March’ fundraiser is putting a spring in the step of art-lovers.

After the success of the children’s charity’s ‘Pigs on Parade’ fundraising campaign last year, artists were again invited to submit a unique design and execute it on a 3ft-tall primed fibreglass model of an animal, this year of that most elusive of our native fauna, the hare.

Submissions from 400 artists were whittled down to 110 with the help of a six-person selection committee. These bespoke sculptures have beenscattered all over Dublin city centre and, as well as an online auction, 25 of the top pieces of hare art will be auctioned live tomorrow by John deVere White.

Dave Southern is the project manager for ‘Hares on the March’. He says the variety of approach of the different artists is one of the most inspirational things about the project. “The diversity of interpretations never ceases to amaze me,” he says. “They all start off with the same basic blank canvas and yet you have everything from Elaine Tobin’s Haigha the Hare, which is covered in punk rocker studs, to Pauline Bewick’s simple and natural approach. It’s an abundance of talent and creative diversity.”

To acclaimed Irish painter Bewick, who has always been inspired by mythology and nature, the hare’s natural beauty needed no embellishments and she replicated a wild hare’s subtle markings and colouring in life-like detail for her contribution. Bewick’s is one of 25 selected “Golden Hares” from some top names in the art world which will be sold at auction tomorrow, although the piece has already had a bid of €5,059 placed on it in the online bids.

The appeal of the pieces as highly collectible artworks is definitely accentuated by their one-off nature, Southern says: “There are no more hares left; we literally broke the mould when we finished casting them, so each contribution by a world renowned artist is guaranteed to be the only one of its kind.”

Keith Payne is an artist best known for the years he spent travelling with the Rolling Stones creating stage sculptures and backdrops for their shows, as well as working with Pink Floyd, before settling in Schull in West Cork. His piece, entitled The Paint Job, has the hare encased in an intricate construction of scaffolding, with tiny workmen painting the patient hare a rich green.

Of course, the pun potential of the word hare wasn’t lost on many contributors; there are pieces with titles like “Hareway to Heaven”, “A hare in my soup” and even “Conor McGregHare,” Meath artist Niall O’Loughlin’s Louis Copeland-clad tribute to Ireland’s MMA superstar.

To see all the hares, or to bid online, see galabid.com/auction/hares