Painter finds her mojo at home

A chance conversation on the street gave Colette Kearney the nudge she needed to refocus on her own art. A former butcher’s shop has been transformed into a beautifully lit gallery in Mountnugent and stands as testimony to how far Colette has come in the past year.

If you are not familiar with Colette’s name, you will nonetheless have likely admired her work as she is the talent behind numerous murals around the county. A graduate in Fine Arts from Limerick, Colette had initially been drawn to pop-art. However, during a spell living in New Zealand, she collaborated with a mural artist on large-scale projects and, upon her return home, she found much demand for her new found skill.

“I fell into the mural painting, and it was all mural painting,” she says.

There’s a map of Sheelin on the gable wall of her Mountnugent gallery, a train painting at Belturbet Railway, a sports montage in Kingspan Breffni and then of course her Kilnaleck mural of Frank Brook.

“Everyone talks about the Kilnaleck one,” she says of the mural at Brooks’ Cross. It has an elderly man in a long black coat wheeling a pair of creamery cans in a handcart.

“He was seemingly a right character,” she says fondly. Though she never knew Frank, you sense the effort she invested in doing him justice has established a bond.

A hunt around local businesses resurrected a cover shot of Ireland’s Eye magazine featuring Frank. Colette was immediately captivated. She had originally intended to use it as “an amazing central image” in a larger montage but, such was its strength, she wisely let Frank inhabit the wall alone.

“As simple as the image is, it captures the spirit of what Kilnaleck was with the creamery and the characters. The cart that he’s wheeling in the photo - he made that, and he used to wheel the two creamery cans in it every day down to the co-op.”

Mural commissions kept the mother of one busy and paid the bills. They also announced her talent, and prompted people to enquire of her own artwork, which Colette politely palmed off by claiming the hustle and bustle of life was gobbling up her time. In truth she had tormented herself with this same question of her own art, yet felt powerless to resolve it. “I used to get myself quite frantic about it,” she recalls. “It was like, every morning I was waking up going: you have to get back to your painting, you have to get back to your painting, and the voice was getting louder and louder and louder.”

One good natured neighbour who enquired however, was insistent on the point.

“He said, ‘No, but why aren’t you doing your own painting?’”

“I was like, ‘To be honest with you I don’t really know what to paint’.

“And he said, ‘What do you mean you don’t know what to paint? Look around you!’ He was just so blunt about it.”

The man had brought clarity to the issue. Helpfully, Colette had already been putting in the groundwork, even if she hadn’t realised it at the time.

“I’d been going around for years taking photographs and little sketches of the skies of Ireland - it was right in front of me but I just didn’t see it. This is the work I had wanted to make. Him saying it was just - you do know what you want to paint, you just have to do it - everything’s in front of you.

“So at the start of this year I said, that’s it I’ll have to carve out a bit of time and get back to painting - that’s what I did.”

Colette simply gave her art the priority it deserved.

“I learned to say ‘no’ to the little things like weekends away, nights out, girls’ meals or anything like that.”

Her daughter Lucy, now 12, was getting more independent too, and offered encouragement.

“We’d be in the house together and she’d be like, ‘Go on Mammy’.”

Colette’s polite refusals didn’t go unnoticed by loved ones who wondered, ‘What’s wrong with her?’

“I felt such a relief. I wasn’t waking up every morning going, why aren’t you painting? I was actually getting back to it again. Getting my oil paints, paint brushes and canvases - it just felt like my shoulders were relaxing, and that time by yourself working away, you go into your own world.

“It just felt great. But I didn’t know if they would be any good.”

A mini show at Crover House Hotel confirmed they were more than simply good, and many people voiced regret they had missed it. Buoyed by the response, Colette enquired about the empty butcher’s shop from Ralph McEnroe who owns the accountants next door.

“They were brilliant - they were like: go for it!’”

Standing in it just before Christmas, gorgeous warm light pours into the gallery to blush the crisp white walls. Her series of paintings of Lough Sheelin have been snapped up with only prints remaining.

“If I had filled the room with Sheelin paintings, they would have all gone. People just love Sheelin, we all love Sheelin.”

Paintings of local towns taken from century old photos adorn the rear of the shop. However, it’s the series of paintings of lonely rural roads captured at dusk that most appeal to the Celt.

Building up the scenes gradually, with intervals lasting days at a time, she only paints over dry paint to ensure “nice vibrant colours”.

The skilfully created flat surfaces are brimming with energy, atmosphere and intrigue. Had Edward Hopper been dropped in rural Ireland, he might have created something similar. Details slowly emerge from the semi-gloom of the foreground.

“I love the evening time and the morning time when it comes to all that light - the beautiful light in the countryside,” she says.

“It’s all softly, softly, softly, working your brush in to get that nice soft effect. And then I love coming in and trying to get these really strong lines in contrast it with it.”

The strong lines are employed for the ubiquitous ESB poles and electricity lines dissecting her wonderful skies.

“I love how the man made contrasts with the natural. It kind of frames it -and there’s something so Irish about these”, she pauses momentarily to be delicate, “they can be perceived as being ugly, these ESB poles and wires coming across, and then you have the contrails from the airplanes.

“I suppose they’re capturing moments. Perhaps.”

Looking to the future, January will see Colette undertake another mural, this time in Mullingar, and then she will return to pursuing her own artworks.

“The dream would be to have a space where I can teach classes and where I can make my work, be able to print my own prints, and paint like mad. And have a big gallery show - that would be the dream.”