Are you drawn to the sea?
If you call into An Grianan Theatre, Letterkenny, you will almost be able to feel the splash of the waves, such is the energy and movement in the paintings currently on display there by Rathmullan based artist, Lisa McGill.
‘My grandmother and her people going back generations were all born and raised on Rutland Island off Burtonport’, Lisa says by way of explanation.
‘I’d like to think that this, for some reason, has a strong bearing on what I choose to paint.’ She spent many summers on the island growing up and still spends time there on a regular basis.
‘It is no mistake that the Wild Atlantic Way has taken hold so firmly. We are a coastal people, and the sea is never very far away.’
Lisa remembers when the last two full-time islanders left Rutland for the mainland decades ago.
‘It was so short sighted of the government not to support island life. The policy was very much to relocate islanders on to the mainland. When I say short-sighted, what I really mean is strategic. They did not want to provide the resources needed to keep island life vibrant and sustainable. You can understand how the convenience of mainland life when it came to schooling and healthcare was definitely a huge draw, but it must have been a very difficult transition for so many people.’
Lisa McGill speaks of her own grandmother, Sarah Boyle, who, even though she went to work in America as a teenager and then returned back home, later married and lived off the island for the rest of her life, she still pined for the island.
‘In her latter years, when as with many, confusion was setting in, she would worry about the changing of the tides and missing the boat to get back home to Rutland.’
The sea also crops up on the other side of Lisa’s family.
‘My father was from Schull in Co. Cork so from one grandmother to the other, which was, in those days, a gruelling ten hour road trip from Letterkenny to Schull, the smell of sea salt in the air meant we had finally arrived!’
As a subject matter, it seems inevitable that Lisa McGill is becoming a renowned seascape artist. She laughs; ‘Yes, I think the subject has chosen me, and not the other way round.’
‘At Sea’ Exhibition is running at An Grianan Theatre in Letterkenny until the 17th June from 9:30 to 6:00 Mon-Fri.
