Tim Goulding: Squaring the circle when art and music connect 

The Beara-based artist toured as part of folk-rockers Dr Strangely Strange, and there are plenty music references in his current exhibition in Cork 

Tim Goulding currently has an exhibition at the Lavit Gallery in Cork. 

As a young man in the 1960s, Tim Goulding had two great passions: art and music. For three years, he toured Ireland and Europe with the cult folk-rock band Dr Strangely Strange, before decamping to the Beara peninsula in West Cork to dedicate himself full-time to painting. The 'Strangelies', all of them now in their seventies, still perform from time to time, and Goulding continues to compose music.

But art is what has sustained him over the past five decades, and it remains his principal activity. Goulding’s new exhibition at the Lavit Gallery in Cork combines his interests, however, featuring as it does a suite of paintings under the title Music. “The paintings hark back to the training in classical music I had as a child,” he says. “Up to the age of 15 or so, I was listening to Beethoven and modern jazz, and reading the Oxford Book of Music.