- 4th July 2026 to 26th July 2026
The Embassy of Ireland, The Netherlands, in partnership with Hamilton Gallery Sligo and Pulchri Studio, The Hague, are exhibiting new paintings by invited artists who are resident either on the island of Ireland or in The Netherlands.
The exhibition is themed on Carrying the Songs a poem by Irish poet Moya Cannon. The poem is a prescient meditation on how music and song can be one of very few things people bring with them when forced from their homes, or to abandon their native country.
I am very happy indeed to have had two paintings selected for the exhibition in the Hague and later in Sligo.
In responding to the poem I remembered seeing a headstone in an old cemetery in Bluff, Utah. USA. which recorded that the deceased was born in Hillsborough, Co. Down. Northern Ireland and had died in Bluff after a long life. A simple Google search of his name revealed that he and his wife had travelled to USA in the early 1800s, that he was a stone cutter and that his wife bore at least 9 children. It is likely that they were among the first European/Anglo settlers of Bluff. I could not help thinking how different a terrain Bulff is compared to Co.Down and this gave me an idea as to how to approach making the paintings. I painted one in many shades of green - to represent the grassy Irish countryside -the stone cutters homeland ; and another in desert colours to represent the Utah desert like landscape and his wife who brought all that life into it. It seemed to me that people travel not only with music but also their hopes and fears, their values and attributes and their skills be they stone cutting or homemaking. Our 'songs' are rich and varied and all of value. Therefore, I titled the paintings ; My Song Cut Stone from Ulster to Utah and My Song Made Flowers Grow in the Desert.
Please click on the little arrow below to see the two paintings.
