Andrea Jameson: 'My admiration for the doctors and nurses at CUH and the Bons is boundless'

The Cappoquin-based artist and descendent of the whiskey family has been through two bouts of cancer. Her exhibition at Ballymaloe is a way of saying thanks to the medical staff who took such good care of her 

Andrea Jameson's exhibition opens at Ballymaloe Grainstore, Co Cork, on Friday. Picture: Bernard van Giessen

Surviving two bouts of cancer has made Andrea Jameson grateful. Grateful to the staff at Cork University Hospital and the Bon Secours Hospital who took charge of her treatment, but also to her sisters Kristin and Tara and the circle of friends who helped her pull through.

“So many people brought me bunches of flowers when I was in hospital,” she says. “I began drawing them, and then I thought I could do more. My admiration for the doctors and nurses at CUH and the Bons is boundless, and I decided I should do an exhibition to thank them.”

The result is A Year of Happiness, an exhibition of 50 of Jameson’s paintings of flowers and landscapes that opens in Ballymaloe Grainstore in Shanagarry, Co Cork, on September 11.

Jameson lives in Tourin House, on the Blackwater River near Cappoquin in Co Waterford. She grew up surrounded by art; her grandmother was Joan Musgrave, a well-known painter in her day. “She was very much ahead of her time,” says Jameson.

“She studied art in Paris, and was instrumental in setting up the Dublin Painters Group. She was friends with Augustus John and Mainie Jellett, and her cousin was Evie Hone. They were very adventurous artists.” 

River Blackwater Valley, by Andrea Jameson.

Joan Musgrave married Thomas Jameson, a direct descendant of John Jameson, who founded a distillery at Bow Street in Dublin in 1780 and went on to produce one of the most famous whiskeys in the world. She inherited Tourin House, where the couple raised their two sons, Julian and Andrea Jameson’s father Shane. 

He was the last of the family to serve on the Jameson company’s board of directors before it amalgamated with Cork Distillers and John Power to form the Irish Distillers Group in 1966.

“My dad was instrumental in creating Irish Distillers,” she says. “He organised the first meeting to discuss the merger here at Tourin House.” 

Shane Jameson met Didi Wiborg, a Norwegian, on a golf course in Oslo in 1949. When they married, she came to live at Tourin House, and threw herself into developing and managing the estate. 

“My father took over a farm, and started a grass-drying factory. Later, he moved into dairy farming. My mother was very creative, and had a great sense of colour. Together, they worked very, very hard to pull the farm together and develop the gardens.” 

Andrea Jameson and her sisters attended school at Newtown, Co Waterford. But at 16, she was dispatched to Florence to learn Italian. 

Jameson's art career

“My sister Kristin was studying art in a studio with Signorina Nerina Simi, and when I went to visit, I got hooked. Signorina Simi was 90 by then, but she was very strict, very focused. She put me in a room of my own, and I learned pure drawing, with charcoal. The fascination and terror of trying to get things right is still with me.”

Jameson went on to study with Giovanni and Flavia Colacicchi at the Accademia di Belle Arti, before moving to London, where she spent a year at the City and Guilds School of Art. On returning to Ireland, she studied privately with John Kelly and Walter Verling in Dublin.

“John was an incredible man,” she says. “He advised me to read and to look at art from all over the world. Walter taught me tone. I’m quite impulsive, but he taught me to use colour carefully.”

Later, she completed her studies under Frank Sanquist at the Crawford College of Art in Cork. “He was 90 then, but he was remarkable. He still had all his art books, and he encouraged me to always keep learning.”

Jameson had her first solo exhibition at the Wellesley Ash Gallery in Dublin in 1976, and she has shown regularly ever since, throughout Ireland and in Britain and Norway. 

Andrea Jameson's painting of Mangans Bay.

In 2008, she and Margaret Best Walsh were chosen by the Newfoundland Arts Council to illustrate, through their paintings, the varied coastline and landscape of Ireland and Newfoundland. 

The following year she was the first Irish artist to be commissioned by Acquamediale International Arts Council in Germany, where she showed her sculpture, The Next Step Is Our Future.

Tourin House has always been a huge part of Jameson’s life. On her father’s death in 1994, she and her sisters decided to sell the dairy farm, but all three work on maintaining the mansion and its 360 acres of forestry and gardens, which they open to the public every summer. “It’s a good, healthy life,” she says.

She is always careful to make space for her painting. “Being an artist, you have to be a little selfish sometimes. I’m always protecting my time. I like to paint outdoors, but the light changes a lot, and I’m always on tenterhooks that I might miss something.” 

Jameson is already working on her next project. “I’ve been asked to show at Killruddery House & Gardens in Co Wicklow in September next year. It’s part of the Irish Gardens Seen Through the Eyes of an Artist series of exhibitions.” 

Her hope for her new exhibition at Ballymaloe is that it will benefit other cancer sufferers. All the profits from sales of her work will go to cancer research and supports for patients with cancer. 

As for herself, “I’ve been lucky to come through it,” she says. “And my health is great now.” 

• Andrea Jameson, A Year of Happiness runs at Ballymaloe Grainstore, Shanagarry, Co Cork from September 11 to October 10. Open daily 9am-5pm. Further information: andreajameson.com