Feeling the healing in a quiet place in the countryside

The use of her son as a model helped artist Debbie Godsell imbue her work with a new sense of hope following a long grieving process for a brother lost to suicide, writes Colette Sheridan

ARTIST Debbie Godsell’s latest exhibition, The Infinite Whatever, marks the end of the grieving process she went through when she lost her brother to suicide 13 years ago.

Andrew Godsell was 32 when he died, leaving Debbie and her family devastated. The tragic event was the catalyst for Debbie, her son Fionn, and husband Mick Heffernan to move to the countryside. Since then, another boy was born. Milo, now aged 8, is a recurring figure in much of Debbie’s exhibition, along with images of the landscape around her home outside Macroom.