About

Since the first Artists in Residence of the Inis Lacken Project in 2001, Cyril was set on following the islands along the west coast of Ireland, visiting a new island yearly, recording and responding by painting these landscapes and their inhabitants, whilst not forgetting those of it’s past. He has reached as far north as the Inishkea Islands to date.
Cyril is essentially a storyteller. He studies these peripheries in all seasons and in all weather. He has witnessed nature in all it’s fury and rawness, seals birthing on the rocky shoreline with grey-green waves crashing at the headlands, migrating geese on their summer holidays in Ireland in our biting cold winter, the stony remains of monastic settlement and thestartlingly beautiful sunsets, silhouetting the ruins of drowned fishermen’s cottage rows from the all-too-common tragedies of the late 1800’s to early 1900’s. Each island has connected him with an islander and their life and a legacy of wonderful friendships.
Ó Flaithearta’s response uses the islands palette and imagery to relay its narrative. Each painting is a paragraph and the exhibition of work, the story in its entirety.
He is inspired by the trail of clues that have been left in the wake of their past inhabitants from, accounts of the Brendan Voyage, remnants of monastic settlement, burial sites, rusty metal boilers from a whaling station, old bird’s nests, treasures washed ashore and the stories the islanders have shared with him. The forensics left behind. He submerges himself in all of this, living the hermit’s life in one of the old cottages on the island (if there is one), photographing, drawing, recording by daylight and writing and sketching by candle light with the wind and sand whistling through the cracks under the door by a fire of driftwood. Living and experiencing the simpler life as they had.
The work is characterised by the use of strong lines and his particular choice of colour palette. The imagery overlaps as does the content within these spaces. The painterly strokes lift the gannets above the water and we feel the instinct to inhale as they emerge. Their own interactions are almost human, the twisting and turning of their necks and heads to be closer to the conversation, with the loose application of paint layering the wonderful subtlety of yellows against white. The solidity and defiance of the cliffs with the waves relentlessly testing their strength. The depth and velvet of blues bare reference to the sea as a barrier, a separator from the mainland, isolatingbut also keeping the magic that is hidden beneath and of the mysteries, the untold secrets safe away from everyone.
These works are a kaleidoscope of twenty seven years.