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PLACE & STORY

You could almost believe anything could happen in Michael McCarthy's 'Rushing Waters'. The Chieftain O'Sullivan resting after unsuccessfully chasing a great stag all over the mountains. Then discovering the animal was Fionn Mac Cumhaill's enchanted deer. And being refreshed by a cascade of whiskey punch when the mythical leader taps the ground with his staff. And the scene really is like that in midday summer sun.

This 'Morning Gathering' could have happened in Killarney in any age over the past 10,000 years. At first light red deer gather on the shore of Muckross Lake. Refreshment at the beginning of another day. Against a backdrop of smokey blue mountain. Shaded under Scots Pine. It could have been this morning.

As an expressionist artist Bob Ó Cathail visualises the heart and soul of his subject. It is clear that 'Panpiper' is from an exotic place and plays music that is also rich and wonderful. There is nothing ordinary or introspective about this 'Jewsharper' and his musical instrument. Would that we were all granted the vision to see the extraordinary in what might seem on first sight ordinary.

How could inoffensive 'Bogcotton' look as powerful as this immensely dominant sky? How could it bestride the landscape and belittle great Douglas firs? And yet it does. And it is entirely authentic. It all depends on your perspective. Jim Flack has the humility to work at ground level.

In 'Spring Meadow' is there green in land and tree before there is leaf or new grass? A kind of sixth sense, an inner sight, on what will shortly burst on an unsuspecting world. A sight to see better times even when everything appears bleak.

In our technicolour world have we become blind to the enormous satisfaction of texture, light and shade. The immensley rich world for those who have eyes to see. A world that we all get a particular glimpse at in the hour to two before sunrise and after sunset .. or during bad weather ..like Mia Funk's 'During Rain'.

'Last Light of Day' very often has an extra intensity that selectively highlights. The low light is particularly attracted to anything white. Look at how it it focuses on the cottage, the boat and elements of water and plant.

Monica Tierney paints out the richness, variety and depths in the 'Evening, Drung Hill' that John Millington Synge saw in people and place of this same landscape during his series of summer visits here a century ago

It might very well have been a field like 'The Hill Meadow' that the character on whom Synge based Christy Mahon walked into in the early 1900s.

- Frank Lewis