Noël O’Callaghan is exhibiting her truly artistic family
NOËL O’Callaghan is exhibiting her paintings alongside her late father, Diarmuid Ó Ceallacháin’s art work at the West Cork Arts Centre at Uilinn in Skibbereen, writes .
The exhibition, entitled Affinities, spans a period of almost eighty years. O’Callaghan, who divides her time between Berlin and West Cork, says she selected the paintings for their significance to her and for their resonance with each other in terms of colour, motif and composition.
Ó Ceallacháin (1915-1993) taught painting at the Crawford School of Art from 1940-1970. Described by Adams’ art dealers in Dublin as “Cork’s finest twentieth century painter,” his native city features widely in his work. O’Callaghan says that if Dublin at the turn of the last century could be reconstructed from Ulysses, so too could a strong sense of Cork in the twentieth century be gleaned from her father’s work. Every bridge, quay and iconic building is portrayed.
“There must be about 100 Cork city paintings alone which is an amazing legacy to leave the city,” says
O’Callaghan. “I think an exhibition of these Cork paintings must be put together. I am trying to source funding for a catalogue as I think it would be a treasure for the city.”
O’Callaghan, who has a degree in English literature from UCC, was given the ultimatum ‘conform or leave’ from the Crawford College in 1978. She no regrets about taking the latter route. In his 1994 catalogue essay for the Iontas exhibition, renowned London gallerist, Bernard Jacobson, singled out O’Callaghan’s work saying he was greatly impressed by its honesty and originality.
O’Callaghan learned a lot from her father. “I learned to see for myself rather than what I was told to see. Dad was a rare original thinker. I also learned from him not to be worried about what people think of me or my work. It’s nice if people like it but essentially, it’s unimportant to me. I also have dad’s disregard for wealth and material acquisition and I treat everyone the same, regardless of status.”
O’Callaghan says her father hasn’t got the recognition she feels he deserves as a result of falling foul of the more conservative and authoritarian elements within Cork City VEC. This cost him his job in 1970.
After this, he was buried by the Cork art scene which, at the time, was closely entwined with the VEC. The 1991 Crawford Gallery retrospective of his work did much to redress the situation and I am getting a great reaction to his work from a whole new generation of Cork artists on Facebook.
The Crawford Gallery has six of Ó Ceallacháin’s paintings in its permanent collection including The Fiddler, one of his most loved pieces of work.
Ó Ceallacháin graduated from the Metropolitan School of Art in Dublin where he was taught by Seán Keating and Maurice MacGonigal. He had won the Taylor scholarship that allowed him to study there. He won a number of awards including the Taylor Prize in 1940 and the medal for drawing from the Paris Salon.
O’Callaghan, who is the sister of Joe O’Callaghan of the band Hot Guitars, is also a musician. She and her partner, Douglas Henderson, are in the process of recording songs written by Henderson.
Berlin has changed a lot since the 1980s when O’Callaghan first moved there.“Rents were cheap and wages were hig . The place was a real artistic hub. I visited East Berlin. Life was far more mixed there than we are led to believe.
“I feel the takeover of the east by the west was bad and many people suffered. Now, the rents are higher and wages are lower. There are a lot of people sleeping rough which wasn’t the case before.”
O’Callaghan is lucky to have a studio from the German Artists’ Association as space is at a premium in Berlin.
An ardent upholder of her father’s legacy, she says the work of Diarmuid O Ceallacháin is “like himself — a combination of extreme sensitivity and strength.”
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