My Weekend: ‘Catching up with friends is such a salve’

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your work

I started life in Cork city in 1962, putting an end to my older sister s’ status of only child. It lasted for her only one year and a month. Two other siblings arrived on the scene over the next six years. Tony and Oona, in that order.

My parents, Eve and Dan, began their lives together in Togher, in a house so small that my maternal grandfather feared if he turned in the bed, his backside might go through the window. He knew a lot about space, coming from Offaly, on the fringes of the wide open expanse of the Bog of Allen.

My father’s family hailed from Newmarket, Co Cork. He moved to Cork, apprenticed in Pulvertaft’s, and studied mechanical engineering through City and Guilds. He, with his brother Mick (who played for the Glen, and Cork minor hurlers in the ’50s) built Galcan, the zinc galvanising plant on the Tramore Road in Cork. Because of the oil crisis in the late ’70s, early ’80s, they had to let it go to the wind and end their dream of running their own business together. I worked there many a weekend and it’s still busily galvanising.

My first real memories were formed from our lives in Douglas, in Bellair, and later in Ovens, where my parents lived until they died in recent years. My mother was an inspiration and a refuge for us all through the thick and thin of our lives, and together as parents of the ’60s and ’70s they surely rocked. They were part of that breakout generation in Ireland.

The thread of my interest and eventually my practice as an artist began long before my arrival in 1962. My maternal great-grandmother was compulsive as a maker of things, from tapestry, drawing, and painting, to woodcarving. I’m told also a cigar smoker in her day. This compulsion with things of intrigue expressed itself through my grandmother as an antique dealer and on through my mother’s design and dressmaking in the ’60s and ’70s, and her drawing and painting and ceramics through all her life… for the sheer joy it and selling her work through the country markets in Ballincollig and later throughout the county and in to Waterford just to pay for the clay and the electricity to fire it in her kiln.

This compulsion made its appearance for me when, at about 11 years old I started to draw with the idea of art with a capital A in my mind; and made public, at least to my best friend, when he called for me to go out to play. I answered with a “no, I’m busy drawing”. That, for him, was the beginning of my “weird”.

My first carving was in elm wood when I was about 12. It was simply an abstract with a nose, a mouth, an ear and an eye, arranged approximately as they would normally, producing a novel expression. I was so proud of myself and this led me on quietly, and without too much fuss, to art school eventually in the ’80s.

The world I found myself in, as an eager spectator, was displayed to me during the ’60s and ’70s on an early black and white TV screen. The screen showed war in Vietnam, civil-rights marches, Northern Ireland, a man walking on the moon, the theatre of the Cold War, chopper bikes, flared jeans, long hair, and many Apollos, inspiring me to want to be an astronaut, for a while anyway. The Day of the Triffids and Carl Sagan on the telly also caught my attention. The latter gave me a very welcome metric of cosmic perspective and an appetite for it since, and the former, simply, terrifying the life out of me.

I ed through three primary and three secondary schools and university for a spell studying science; an interest in which I still hold dear. The ‘drop-out’ deal I made afterwards with my parents as I headed to the Crawford College of Art in 1982 was give it a go and if it doesn’t work out “you’ll look for a real job”. An anxiety I understand only too well now I have two children of my own, Lucy and Josef, now fledged and making their own ways in the world. I gave myself five years once I graduated in 1987.

This was all preceded by a Huck Finn style adolescence, with the best friend Tim or Dricky, whom I mentioned earlier, on a home-built raft on the lacework of rivers and lakes near our home in Ovens in the late ’70s.

In art college, much of what I’d previously been schooled in needed to be shelved, and novelty, now, needed to be taken very seriously indeed. I achieved independence through bar work in the Long Valley and I bought a fast bicycle and an astronomical telescope to better see the heavens with, and hurtled through those years with enthusiasm, finding love and having my heart broken in equal proportions along the way.

Since then, I’ve travelled a bit, moved house many times and studio more times than that, built a ‘shedifice’ or two, renovated an old church building, had two beautiful children, and managed to make sculpture in between.

Until just before covid, I lived and worked in West Cork, by the Atlantic Ocean. Here I was drawn to the human binary of ion and prudence and found something of that exposed near to the close proximity of the land with the sea. I lived there with my companion dog Coco, well within the range of the Atlantic’s briny mist, and most days, I visited the strip on either side of its tidal breath by either kayak or on foot.

My covid-19 times coincided with a complete upheaval in the architecture of my life and work and my hurtling along began all over again; where so much happens from so many different directions that it is difficult to make any sense of it at all.

Needless to say, it did include moving house and studio once more and before eventually settling, the studio once more again. The hurtle continued until finally it seemed, waking from its maelstrom, I was once again back in the renovated old church building in Coachford, which was accompanied by a life-affirming gasp of air in the late spring of 2020.

During the lockdowns, there was a welcome up-tick in renovations, which included a gallery and an attempt to re-fashion the ‘shedifice’ studio brought with me. An unsuccessful bash at this led to a very successful stab at simply recycling the materials.

It resulted, to my delight, in a very bright, open, and airy studio work space. Through those covid days with recently-met Johanna, from Schull, we together, and with gallons of paint, brightened up our shared world of 2 Studios: One Gallery. Myself and Coco now live with Johanna, and her companion dog Toast, and we each work in one of those studios in Coachford. We married in 2023.

What is your ideal way to spend a Friday night?

Johanna and I love to prepare something special to eat, enjoy a glass of wine, and veg in front of a film.

Lie-ins or up with the lark... which is it for you?

I’d love a lie in if I could sleep. I instead tend to linger-in when I can, reading or writing. Much work is done first thing in the morning before I rise.

Does work creep into your weekend at all?

It seems that it never creeps out.

If money was no object, where would you head to on a weekend city break? And who would you bring with you?

Istanbul, the junction of continents and cultures, with Johanna.

Closer to home, is there some place you like to head to recharge the batteries?

I love the Long Strand near Owenahincha.

Do you like to catch up with family/friends at the weekend?

It doesn’t happen every weekend that we gather with family, but when it does it is always so very enjoyable … It’s such a salve.

Do you get to indulge any hobbies? Even as a spectator?

I love to kayak, although I haven’t been out in a long time.

Entertain or be entertained? If the latter is there a signature dish?

Both. I love a fish broth with wakame, miso, noodles, and anything I find that might suit my mood at the time of preparing.

We have so many places to eat out in Cork — where are your go- to spots for coffee/lunch/special meal?

We entertain here in Coachford and our friends will stay over. It’s 15 miles to the city and the driving probably deters us in exploring places to eat.

Coffee would be in the Farm Gate in the English Market, the bustle, the fare, and the vantage for people watching above the fountain is a treat.

Sunday night comes around too fast. How do you normally spend it?

Linger-ins don’t happen on Mondays, so the prep for the week begins Sunday evening/night. Early to bed.

What time does your alarm clock go off on Monday morning?

I wake myself in the summer when usually eyes open anytime from 6.30 - 7.00.

Anything else you are up to right now...

I’ve had a crazy three years, so in a few weeks’ time I might just step back for some perspective.

Paper — Pencil — Chisel — Stone; a t exhibition by Michael Quane RHA and Johanna Connor, drawing on the artists’ respective media of stone and paper, is taking place at the Lavit Gallery and continues until June 14.