Accidental tourist now an artist in residence

Lifestyle – Judy Murphy meets artist Derrick Hawker for whom Connemara is his blank canvas

When English-born artist Derrick Hawker was summoned to a meeting in the local pub by a group of friends from the Connemara island of Gorumna back in 1970, he was a bit apprehensive.

He’d been a regular visitor to the Ceantar na nÓileán area of Connemara since first stumbling on it by accident while driving around Ireland in 1965. From that moment, he had been overwhelmed by the welcome extended to him by local people.

Over the course of five years, Derrick, who lectured in art at Belfast, had moved from sleeping in his tent with his Pyrenean mountain dog, to staying in sheds and barns, where people made up beds for him. But he wasn’t sure why he was being called to a parish meeting – however, all became clear when he got there. 

“They told me I was going to build a house locally and said “tomorrow, we are going to show you where”.

Now, some four decades after Derrick built his house and nearly fifty years after first setting foot on Gorumna, he is sharing his unique perspective of Ceantar na nOileán in an exhibition at Galway City Museum. Súil Siar ar Oileáin – An Islands’ Retrospective will run until October.

But, he stresses, the exhibition, which spans a 40-year period, is not about him and he doesn’t want it to be. It’s a celebration of this place and its people, a place which he describes as his spiritual home and which has offered him, his wife Liz and their family a haven through the years.

“If it hadn’t been for the people’s welcome and kindness, I wouldn’t have got the spiritual element of this place,” he observes.

Derrick has been part of Gorumna since he first arrived in 1965, unlike many artists who draw inspiration from West of Ireland scenery while remaining detached from the community.

Back then, he took a two-week driving holiday around Ireland, starting on the East Coast. While he was “dying to see the West of Ireland”, he kept lingering in other places until, with two days left, he arrived in Galway. Intending to travel to Clifden, he took the coast road and took the wrong turn in Casla. Not realising his error he kept going. A local lady named Mary Mulkerrins, who features in the Museum exhibition, came out to meet him. At the time there were six cars, two lorries and one tractor on the island, so his arrival was noticed.

He camped there, leaving himself a day to get back to Belfast, and all these years later, the memory is as vivid as if it were yesterday.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.