Tim Goulding: West Cork-based artist takes stock with new exhibition at 81

Many of the pieces in the VI Decades exhibition were inspired by the landscape around his home in Allihies

Tim Goulding: VI Decades is currently on at the Taylor Galleries in Dublin.

Sun, 02 Aug, 2026 - 21:30

Marc O’Sullivan Vallig

Tim Goulding’s VI Decades exhibition at the Taylor Galleries in Dublin traces the arc of a 60-year career across 26 series of paintings, mostly inspired by the landscape surrounding his home in Allihies, on the Beara peninsula in West Cork.

Goulding has lived in Allihies since 1968, when he bought and began renovating the old schoolhouse at Reentrisk. His intention, even then, was to become a full-time artist.

Initially, however, there were distractions, not least his sideline career as keyboardist and singer with the folk rock outfit Dr Strangely Strange, with whom he toured Ireland and Britain and recorded two albums, Kip of the Serenes and Heavy Petting. Around 1972, he finally left the band and committed to painting.

Goulding had grown up surrounded by art. His father, Basil Goulding, was a successful businessman and one of the most prodigious collectors in the country, and Dargle Cottage, their home near Enniskerry, Co Wicklow, served as a magnet for the creatives of his day.

“It was through my father that I got to know so many Irish artists,” says Goulding. “People like Paddy Collins, Pat Scott, Barrie Cooke and Cecil King. They’d all call to the house. International artists would come as well. Henry Moore called one time when I was doing a little painting of three pots on a shelf, and he said, you can't do that. It's meant to be illusionist, but it's not going to work on the flat surface. But I've been painting like that ever since, despite his advice.”

On Sundays, his father often took him to visit the artist Camille Souter, who lived nearby on Calary Bog. It was on one such trip he had a sort of epiphany. “We were going up the hill, up the old bog road to the Sugarloaf. I was looking out the window of the car and there was a shaft of light on a hay field down below. And somehow that triggered me. It was one of those moments. I suddenly thought, I am going to be an artist.”

One of the pieces by Tim Goulding in his current exhibition.

He had a similar experience when he first visited Beara. “I came down to visit Norman Steele, who later founded Milleens Cheese. I took one look around and said, 'this is the place for me'.”

Before he bought the schoolhouse, he’d stay at Mary Jo Harrington’s pub in Allihies village. “I’d sometimes serve behind the bar late at night. All the men would be there, in their black suits. And I was a hippie. I went barefoot and wore a kaftan and had hair down to my navel. I didn’t drink, but I wanted to blend in, so I'd fill a whole pint glass with Coca-Cola, and then I'd put a Guinness head on top to make it look as if I was having a pint.”

In Dublin, Goulding had been part of a bohemian circle that included the musicians Phil Lynott and Gary Moore. “I remember going to a formal event in Dublin one time with my mum and dad. Jack Lynch was there, the taoiseach, and as we were all walking into the Gresham Hotel, he said, 'there's the weirdy son of Sir Basil'. So that’s what I was for a while: the weirdy son of Sir Basil.”

In Beara, he always felt welcome. “One thing I had on my side was that my mother, Lady Valerie, was well-known all over the country,” he says. “She'd be on the Late Late Show, and she'd go around raising money for the Central Remedial Clinic. When people found that out, it gave me a little bit of a push. You know, Valerie's boy.”

Goulding’s girlfriend at that time was Annie Mohan. “My mother was very keen on us getting married. So I looked at all the religions, and the one that made sense to me, to some degree, was Buddhism. I found this Tibetan monastery in Scotland, the first one in the West, a place called Samye Ling. I rang them up and said, could we come and get married? We went there for a month, Annie and I. We got married by a Tibetan teacher named Akong Rinpoche. My mother loved it. She sat on the floor while the Buddhist monks were ringing bells and chanting.”

When Goulding settled in at the old schoolhouse in Reentrisk, he began painting obsessively. “I used to take my canvas and paints down to the fields,” he says, “and I’d work outside for 10 hours a day.”

His work naturally fell into series. One explored the sea caves a mile or so from his home, another the standing stones in the area, and another the mountain fires that erupted when the furze was burned off every spring.

“I think the most emotional series I did was Facing Darkness, Seeing Light,” he says. “I'd gone through a kind of a breakdown over the breakup of a relationship. I was in a very distressed state, and I was walking around in the hills at six in the morning.

"One morning, I called to see a very wise friend of mine. He made me a cup of tea and said, you're like a man at the bars in a prison cell trying to see the light. Why don't you turn around and look at the darkness? And that one phrase triggered a whole show.

“I went into the old copper mines in Allihies, in under the wire, and did all these paintings underground. I think that's the most successful series I've done.”

Goulding eventually built a new house at Eagle Hill, a short distance from the old schoolhouse, where he now lives with his wife Georgina. Over the past eight years or so, he has found himself moving away from representational painting.

“I mean, I still work from the landscape,” he says. “That’s still at the core of everything I do. But I'm happiest as an abstract painter. When you get into that territory, you're free to use every colour and line you come across, and every texture. That's really the area I'm happiest in.”

Goulding is 81 now, and the VI Decades exhibition has allowed him a chance to take stock. “It feels like I’ve got my life out of the way,” he says. “It’s all up there on the walls.” Not everything in the exhibition is up for sale, but pieces range in price from €1,200 to €10,000.

He likes to keep busy. Dr Strangely Strange have reformed sporadically over the years. They recorded a new album, Anti-Inflammatory, last year, and they still gig occasionally. He also writes poetry, and has self-published six volumes of his verse. But art remains at the core of his existence.

“I just want to paint for myself from now on,” he says. “And who knows what’s going to happen next?”