Urban sketcher captures Galway’s vibrancy in all its glory

Róisín Curé first arrived in Galway City on a September’s day in 1991. She got off the bus at Eyre Square and walked down Shop Street to come face-to-face with the city’s buzz for the first time.

“I was sure there was a festival on,” she says. “But no – it was just an ordinary afternoon, an ordinary Tuesday in September. I soon learned that that’s just Galway.”

And thus, began a love affair that has now culminated in a glorious new book of her art and stories, entitled an Urban Sketcher’s Galway, which has just hit the bookshops.

Róisín has always loved art – she painted as a child and now teaches children, as well as adults, how to paint – but it was the urban sketcher concept that made sense of it all.

Urban sketching is a global community of artists who draw and paint on the spot, with broad brush strokes that capture whatever happens to be in front of them – and it has a fluidity and vitality that more ‘traditional’ methods might eschew.

“It’s about sketching something as you see it; you can set out to capture a scene or an image – but sometimes it’s just something that catches your eye and you can’t walk by,” she says.

Her beautifully produced book on Galway’s cityscape does all of that and more – images of the Spanish Arch, Long Walk, the Cathedral, the Docks . . . but also of the city’s pubs, restaurants, buskers, and a couple of takes on the Saturday Market with a vibrancy that almost jumps off the printed page.

An Urban Sketcher’s Galway by Róisín Curé is on sale in all good bookshops now.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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