ANN Martin’s first solo exhibition in almost 20 years is being eagerly anticipated by admirers of her work.
Her oils and watercolours will already be familiar to a lot of people in West Cork because they inhabit familiar public spaces – like the wall facing the bar in Hackett’s in Schull.
Even before the bar fills, Ann has it peopled already with a cast of well-recognised locals. It’s part of her gift to capture people, streetscapes, and the great outdoors in a natural but ethereal way.
In the past, Ann has had exhibitions in London, France and Chicago, but this is her first show in West Cork in 20 years.
Her lively and beautiful works have been selling all the while. They feature in lots of private collections. Samples of her work have even been acquired by two museums in her native America. People who have a relationship with the subjects of the paintings feel compelled to buy them. Ann explains this urge saying, ‘We like to see ourselves.’
The same could be said of the fabulous paintings she had done of buildings and entire streetscapes in Skibbereen, and other West Cork towns.
Ann cites one watercolour of O’Brien’s haberdashery in Skibbereen as something she felt compelled to paint.
‘I’ve often painted places that I felt we were in danger of losing because of cultural changes,’ she said.
‘Rather than focus on the pain that we have to endure in life,’ Ann said she likes to ‘focus on how people enjoy themselves and survive.’
‘Not enough can be said about the everyday situation,’ she said. ‘Everyone deserves a medal at the end of the day.’
The circumstances of her work are not opulent. ‘There are no velvet drapes – it’s all shop counters, as well as people who work and relate to each other in everyday life.’
Interest in Ann’s work has led to solo exhibitions in Waterford, but that was in the years before Covid.
As a mother of five children, ranging in ages from 35 to 48, Covid wasn’t a completely silent, reflective time. Ann said it didn’t really impact her because she uses isolation for her work.
‘I also have an expansive garden in which to expend my energy,’ she adds. ‘It nurtures me as much as I nurture it.’
When Ann and her late husband purchased their home at Lisheen outside Skibbereen in the 1980s, the house they bought wasn’t the chic, well-designed home she lives in now.
In fact, she says with a laugh, they had just about evicted the goats before moving in. It was there that they gave their children the kind of liberal upbringing that was at the core of everything they stood for.
Ann is doing today what she has done all her life. Simply, declaratively she says it herself: ‘I have made art all my life. I have never enjoyed artificial means of celebration – be it drinking, drugs or parties. They fly over my head. Creating art is to mark time and say this is an event.
‘My paintings are testimonials to events that capture my imagination and make me feel that there is a creative source beyond our understanding.’
It might also be true to say that Ann has made her life art because her home and garden are beautifully curated.
‘They are crafted,’ she says, with a laugh. ‘The gardens and the house are crafted to suit my rapacious aesthetic appetite – everything has to be beautiful.’
She stops, for a moment, edits herself, and says: ‘No, maybe it’s better to say I have to take away the things that obscure the beauty. That’s what I mean by crafted. It’s sculpted.’
Martin’s exhibition at Marino Church in Bantry opens on Thursday September 7th and runs until September 24th. It will be open daily from 12 noon until 5pm.
