Clodagh Finn: Meet the 95-year-old artist who modelled for ‘Mother Ireland’ statue

A very popular artist in Ireland and abroad, Maeve Taylor recalls painting the Kinsealy home of former Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, and a day in May 1974 when the bombings happened on Talbot Street in Dublin.

Maeve Taylor: “I can’t cook, I can’t sing and I can’t sew. The only thing I can do in the world is paint.”

Artist Maeve Taylor (now proudly 95) came face-to-face with her younger self earlier this month when Kilmainham Gaol museum invited her to view the head of a sculpture she modelled for in 1955.

The bust, in storage since the 1970s, is now on display but Maeve, a prolific artist herself, did not know of its existence.