Wendy Dison: A long road that has brought the artist to Killorglin, via West Cork
Wendy Dison at Shanagarry Beach in Co Cork.
Wendy Dison is the latest artist to benefit from the distinctive curatorial approach employed by Lucy and Robert Carter at their gallery in Killorglin, Co Kerry. Since opening the Grilse Gallery in 2022, the Carters have mounted dozens of exhibitions where the emphasis is not so much on commercial work as on their artists’ interests and passions.
Dison’s new solo exhibition at the Grilse is called Land : Memory, and is inspired by the landscape around her home in Kealkill, West Cork, where she has lived with her husband, the artist Dick Richards, since 1999.
“Lucy and Robert got in touch last November,” says Dison. “When they said they'd like to have me do an exhibition, I imagined they would want all the new paintings I'd been working on. But when they came to the studio, I started showing them the other bits and pieces I had lying around, and they said, could we have this, and this?
"So it’s a very mixed show. I love painting, but some of my favourite things to produce are in mixed media, and the exhibition features collage and monotype prints and larger pieces of work on paper that I don’t usually get to show in galleries. Land : Memory is the title of some of the pieces I made a few years ago. It covers a lot of my concerns as an artist.”
Dison was born in Liverpool, and studied at Liverpool School of art and Bristol Polytechnic between 1969 and 1974.
“I knew I was interested in art, but I didn’t know what sort. I hadn’t studied art at school. I went to a very academic school and the art department wasn’t very good. I didn’t do a foundation course either, and when I went to art school, they suggested that I do industrial design. Maybe I was just too young, but I wasn’t terribly interested in any of it.”
After college, she held a succession of management jobs. “That was so boring, working in offices,” she laughs. “I was not at all suited to that kind of work, but I did it for some years before I packed everything in and started travelling.”
Dison’s first major trip was to Africa. “I started in Tunisia. I would have travelled alone, but I wanted to cross the Sahara, and you need a lot of mechanical expertise if you want to do that safely. So I joined a small group with a truck. There were only nine of us, and it was fantastic.
"We spent seven months camping out every night. We went right through Central Africa and into East Africa, through Sudan and Kenya. That was the end of the trip, in Kenya. I enjoyed it so much I wanted to keep travelling for the rest of my life.”
Dison has been to many far-flung places since. “I’ve spent a lot of time in northern Pakistan on foot,” she says, “walking the old Silk Road where it was possible. That was the most fabulous experience. And I’ve been to South America.
"Starting in Mexico, I went right down to Chile on public transport. I walked where I could, seeking out the little villages, the kind of places that are not inundated with tourists. People were mostly very kind, and I didn’t often feel in danger, though there were times I had to be wary.
"But yeah, here I am, all in one piece. I always kept a journal when I was travelling, and I often did sketches. I had the feeling that I was going to do something with them when I got home.”
On returning to Liverpool, Dison began making art. She met her future husband, and they agreed to move to Kealkill. “We had already found this house before we left England,” she says.
“It was a ruin, literally. The roof leaked, and there was no electricity or running water. There was just mud and long grass all around it. We only have one small field and the farmyard and a bit of a boreen, but there was something about this place that we both loved. The field walls are still here, there’s the old well, and the style over the wall into the field. There’s a real sense of history. We both responded to that.”
They lived simply, slowly restoring the property themselves, and employing a builder for the more specialist work as and when they had the money. “It was only when we moved here that I really started thinking about being a full-time artist. I used to work in the old loft over the stable. I was doing more printmaking in those days. I realised it was something I could teach in primary schools. Printmaking was on the curriculum, so I’d do one or two lessons with each class. I enjoyed it. I like teaching.”
Eventually, Dison qualified for a UK pension. “I was one of the last cohort to get the pension at 60,” she says. “Now you have to wait until you’re 67. When I got the pension, that changed everything. It wasn’t a huge amount of money, but it meant I could spend more time making art.
"And then, in 2012, I was lucky enough to be able to build a studio, with lots of space, and that’s when I began painting in oils.”
Dison has always taken inspiration from the natural world. “I love to go out walking with a big sketchbook and materials. Just walking and looking. I’m interested in the history of the land, why it is the way it is, and what might have happened on it. This part of the world has really resonated with my creativity."
She has no notion of retiring. “When I make work, it’s for myself,” she says. “I never think about what might be popular or what might sell. I have pieces in group exhibitions in different galleries, and beyond this Land : Memory exhibition at the Grilse Gallery, I should probably be applying to do other shows. But something will turn up, I’m sure.”
- Wendy Dison, Land : Memory runs at the Grilse Gallery in Killorglin until August 2. Further information: grilse.ie
