Sunshine on a rainy day: A visit to the Wright Artists’ group exhibition in Westport

Grey skies, umbrellas and puddles. Flowers rotting off their stems. Fruit splitting before it gets a chance to ripen. Even the fishing isn’t great, I hear.
This is not the July we were expecting. It’s as though the summer showed us her ankle in June, but then had second thoughts about being so bold and lowered her skirts in shame. (It is Ireland, after all.)
It’d be enough to dampen your spirits, if there weren’t other ways to introduce some colour into your life. Happily, scattered throughout Mayo are galleries galore, offering the rain soaked a chance to dry off while drinking in some colour, shapes and painterly escapes.
For this writer, last Saturday’s grey gloom was chased away by a single visit to a Westport gallery – the one nestled inside the Clew Bay Hotel on James Street. On show is a mixed-media exhibition by long-running local artists’ collective The Wright Artists. Comprised of 27 pieces, it is full of variety.
Mary Burns’ delightfully splashy painting of a hare, ‘Bright Eye’ instantly lifts the mood, the creature’s bright blue hues surrounded by citrus yellow and moss green all shot through with wild silver strokes. Her smaller piece, ‘Small Eye’, hangs discretely on another wall, like a leveret in the long grass, a giddy discovery.
Breda Burns’ arresting ‘Fractured Shadow’ artworks couldn’t be more different from her sister Mary’s pieces. Compellingly disorientating, they are made with a photographic image on vinyl and aluminium, and have a magnetic quality that makes you want to stop, stare and reflect. Indeed, reflecting is a central element of the artist’s other artworks in the show – Clouds I and II. These had me swaying from side to side and crouching to look upward – each angle yielding an enticing new view. Using mirror, glass, photographic and drawn elements, these ethereal pieces would certainly help you feel less bitter about the cloudy skies outside.
Sinéad Wall’s watercolour ‘Western Shore, Evening’ and her linocuts depicting Silver Strand and Bertra and are stunning visual reminders of the beauty with which West Mayo is blessed.
Another linocut – Susie Quinn’s ‘Amazing Grace’ – stares regally from a wall. Cows seem ever curious, ever contemplative, something Quinn’s piece captures perfectly. You can almost hear her bovine subject chewing the cud.
Claire Griffin’s wonderfully detailed copperplate etchings show familiar scenes of the west. A cottage tucked into Inishlacken beneath (yes) cloudy skies. A well-wrapped-up woman tending to a clothesline on a windy day. One of the now-ubiquitous coffee trailers beside a picnic bench, the trailer’s steel reflecting the dramatic surrounding landscape.
A wall is given over to six charming oil paintings by Gráinne O’Reilly, where boldly coloured brown and rainbow trout hang alongside rural scenes – ‘Silver Strand at Dusk’, ‘Tracter in Louisburgh’, ‘Kerry Slipway’, ‘Campervan at Silver Strand’. O’Reilly’s lively brushstrokes bring her subjects to life – rushes sway, a tractor glistens, a happy camper dozes gently.
Magaret Duffy’s ‘Night Vision’ shows another rural scene. A tiny cottage becomes otherworldly through the artist’s eye. Its white walls shine through grey darkness and bare winter branches, haunting yet somehow comforting. The kind of place that draws you in despite making you feel wary.
The thorns in Betty Gannon’s ‘Undergrowth, Brambles’ might make you feel wary too, but the warm yellows and greens, the soft lines, are so inviting that you’d risk being pricked just to reach out and touch them. Her companion piece, ‘Undergrowth, Honeysuckle’ is a rich celebration of our fragrant roadside rambler, their ruddy to delicate pinks and golden to pale yellows deliciously rendered.
Nature studies also form the heart of Michael Gannon’s two fabulous cyanotypes – ‘Ferns’ and ‘Reed Grass’. The artist explains that cyanotype – also known as blueprint or sun print – was first invented in 1842 by an astronomer. The process involves the creation of a light-sensitive solution containing iron salts and allowing prints to develop in sunlight. Gannon’s own variation on the original process has yielded truly beautiful results.
Then you turn a corner and suddenly it’s all whimsy. Pamela Gray’s three gorgeous artworks carry her much-loved playful and fantastical stamp. An abstract dog, ‘Triangular Pooch’, is just joyful, while the more sombre ‘Elephantine’ pulls at the heart strings. No one could fail to smile while looking at ‘Inventions’, with its eclectic, dreamlike collection of things to be thankful for – from false teeth to dominoes – all presented with Gray’s singular magical twist.
One exhibition, so much to see and digest.
So, dear reader, when the skies bruise and the raindrops fall, maybe you too could find solace in the belly of a gallery. A visit to any one of Mayo’s many art galleries will transport you to another world, taking you out of the everyday by offering you new views to appreciate – and by the time you leave, you never know, the clouds might just have parted.

The Wright Artists’ group show is running at the Clew Bay Hotel Gallery, James Street, Westport, until July 31.