Archive News
Artist Pat inspired by lure of the sea
Date Published: 11-Oct-2012
If her sister hadn’t decided to study in Ireland, Detroit born Pat Byrne may well have lived a very different life – and this year’s Baboró poster would more than likely have been created by someone else.
Pat was thrilled when she was asked to paint the poster for this year’s children’s festival, which opens on Monday.
As it happens, coincidentally, an exhibition of some of Pat’s limited edition works is being held this week in the Salmon Weir Gallery as part of the Baboró festival. That gallery is located in Simon J Kelly’s offices in Waterside.
But Pat wasn’t always an artist. She started out with an interest in the sciences, particularly physics but followed her sister Maria into zoology.
The two of them were reared in the US city of Detroit – in a very industrialised part of the city, Pat says – and thought Ireland was “paradise” when they were brought here on holidays.
So Maria came to the then UCG and when it was Pat’s turn to go to college a year later, she applied for the same course, got it and has an honours degree in zoology.
“I loved college, loved my course and thought I was so lucky to be living and studying in a lovely part of the world. I started diving and that opened up a whole new world to me, which is probably why many of my paintings now are underwater scenes.”
The Baboró poster is an underwater scene and looks like something out of a Disney movie. It will be very appealing to children while parents will appreciate its artistic qualities.
It has been almost three decades since Pat was diving, during her college days but the beauty she saw in local waters is as fresh today, she says, as then and luckily enough, she can draw on those memories to create her paintings today.
She effectively goes into another world when she goes into her studio at the back of her house to sit before a canvas. She usually does a rough sketch before taking up a paint brush and often does one painting after another on the same theme until she gets it out of her system.
“I suppose I am fascinated with wildlife since I did zoology. I love birds and fish and plankton, coral, anything that is underwater.”
Her take on Galway scenes, probably because she first saw them as a teenager with fresh eyes, is romantic and quirky as can be seen in her paintings depicting the Claddagh and the Latin Quarter. These are colourful with a trace of the ‘naïve art’ style about them.
Because she works in oils, her own taste in art tends to veer towards ceramics, sculpture and any medium other than the one she uses herself.
The house is full of favourite paintings by her over the years interspersed with other artists’ work, including very impressive puppetry made by one of her daughters for her Leaving Cert.
Pat met her husband, Salthill man, Ollie Daniels when they were both in college and his work took the young family to France for a few years when the children were young. Those children, Niamh, Caoimhe and Diarmuid are aged 24, 22 and 19 now. Niamh and Caoimhe have finished college and Diarmuid has just started.
For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.
People’s living conditions less than 100 years ago were frightening. We have come a long way. We talk about water charges today, but back then the local District Councils were erecting pumps for local communities and the lovely town of Mountbellew, according to Council minutes, had open sewers,” says Galway County Council archivist Patria McWalter.
Patria believes we “need to take pride in our history, and we should take the same pride in our historical records as we do in our built heritage”. When you see the wealth of material in her care, this belief makes sense.
She is in charge of caring for the rich collection of administrative records owned by Galway County Council and says “these records are as much part of our history as the Rock of Cashel is. They document our lives and our ancestors’ lives. And nobody can plan for the future unless you learn from the past, what worked and what didn’t”.
Archivists and librarians are often unfairly regarded as being dry, academic types, but that’s certainly not true of Patria. Her enthusiasm is infectious as she turns the pages of several minute books from Galway’s Rural District Councils, all of them at least 100 years old.
Part of her role involved cataloguing all the records of the Councils – Ballinasloe, Clifden, Galway, Gort, Loughrea, Mountbellew, Portumna and Tuam. These records mostly consisted of minutes of various meetings.
When she was cataloguing them she realised their worth to local historians and researchers, so she decided to compile a guide to their content. The result is For the Record: The Archives of Galway’s Rural District Councils, which will be a valuable asset to anybody with an interest in history.
Many representatives on these Councils were local personalities and several were arrested during the political upheaval of the era, she explains.
And, ushering in a new era in history, women were allowed to sit on these Rural District Councils – at the time they were not allowed to sit on County Councils.
All of this information is included in Patria’s introductory essay to the attractively produced A4 size guide, which gives a glimpse into how these Rural Councils operated and the way political thinking changed in Ireland during a short 26-year period. In the early 1900s, these Councils supported Home Rule, but by 1920, they were calling for full independence and refusing to recognise the British administration.
“I love the tone,” says Patria of the minutes from meetings. “The language was very emotive.”
That was certainly true of the Gort Rural District Council. At a meeting in 1907, following riots in Dublin at the premiere of JM Synge’s play, The Playboy of the Western World the councillors’ response was vehement. They recorded their decision to “protest most emphatically against the libellous comedy, The Playboy of the Western World, that was belched forth during the past week in the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, under the fostering care of Lady Gregory and Mr Yeats. We congratulate the good people of Dublin in howling down the gross buffoonery and immoral suggestions that are scattered throughout this scandalous performance.
For more from the archives see this week’s Tribunes here
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
SLIGO 0-9
GALWAY 1-4
FRANK FARRAGHER IN ENNISCRONE
GALWAY’S first serious examination of the 2013 season rather disturbingly ended with a rating well below the 40% pass mark at the idyllic, if rather Siberian, seaside setting of Enniscrone on Sunday last.
The defeat cost Galway a place in the FBD League Final against Leitrim and also put a fair dent on their confidence shield for the bigger tests that lie ahead in February.
There was no fluke element in this success by an understrength Sligo side and by the time Leitrim referee, Frank Flynn, sounded the final whistle, there wasn’t a perished soul in the crowd of about 500 who could question the justice of the outcome.
It is only pre-season and last Sunday’s blast of dry polar winds did remind everyone that this is far from summer football, but make no mistake about it, the match did lay down some very worrying markers for Galway following a couple of victories over below par third level college teams.
Galway did start the game quite positively, leading by four points at the end of a first quarter when they missed as much more, but when Sligo stepped up the tempo of the game in the 10 minutes before half-time, the maroon resistance crumbled with frightening rapidity.
Some of the statistics of the match make for grim perusal. Over the course of the hour, Galway only scored two points from play and they went through a 52 minute period of the match, without raising a white flag – admittedly a late rally did bring them close to a draw but that would have been very rough justice on Sligo.
Sligo were backable at 9/4 coming into this match, the odds being stretched with the ‘missing list’ on Kevin Walsh’s team sheet – Adrian Marren, Stephen Coen, Tony Taylor, Ross Donovan, David Kelly, David Maye, Johnny Davey and Eamon O’Hara, were all marked absent for a variety of reasons.
Walsh has his Sligo side well schooled in the high intensity, close quarters type of football, and the harder Galway tried to go through the short game channels, the more the home side bottled them up.
Galway badly needed to find some variety in their attacking strategy and maybe there is a lot to be said for the traditional Meath style of giving long, quick ball to a full forward line with a big target man on the edge of the square – given Paul Conroy’s prowess close to goal last season, maybe it is time to ‘settle’ on a few basics.
Defensively, Galway were reasonably solid with Gary Sice at centre back probably their best player – he was one of the few men in maroon to deliver decent long ball deep into the attacking zone – while Finian Hanley, Conor Costello and Gary O’Donnell also kept things tight.
For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.
Date Published: 23-Jan-2013
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