‘I don't mind if people do or don't like’ painting of Croagh Patrick

When Kim Day won Sky Arts Landscape Artist of the Year, the English painter could hardly have anticipated the whirlwind that would follow — sold-out work, a National Gallery commission, and an unexpected love affair with the west of Ireland.

"It's been amazing — quite hectic, if I'm being honest, but it's a good kind of hectic," she says. "Everything I had is now gone, so I'm starting from scratch. It's really nice to have a clean slate and start a new set of work."

The win brought with it a prestigious commission from the National Gallery of Ireland — the first of its kind the institution had ever undertaken. Dr Brendan Rooney, who oversees a collection widely regarded as the most comprehensive holding of Irish art in the world, approached Day with a specific challenge: to paint Croagh Patrick, the legendary mountain on Mayo's western seaboard, and explore a gap in the landscape's artistic depiction.

For Day, it meant travelling somewhere she had never been before — despite having lived in Belfast and travelled widely across Ireland.

"I'd never been across to Westport," she admits. "So it was a really wonderful discovery, just realising how beautiful it is. Going up Croagh Patrick, travelling around Achill Island — it was just tremendous. And the welcome was so warm."

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"It felt like a real privilege to meet all these amazing people and see their experience of living around Croagh Patrick. It was an amazing experience all round."

Kim Day and Matt Molloy in Matt Molloy's, Westport

One of the people she met was Fr John Kenny, who made quite an impression when met her wearing a Kylo Ren costume.

“She was just taken aback as the last thing you'd expect to see coming down off Croagh Patrick was Kylo Ren,” the Westport Parish Administrator laughs.

He uses the costume for fundraising events and it was a nod to her career in the film industry, which includes working on a Star Wars film.

He says that it “only after seeing the program that I realised how deeply spiritual and how deeply appreciative she was of her visit to the mountain.”

“She covered all the vital aspects of what the mountain means to people, and certainly means to her as an artist,” he reflects.

Fr John Kenny and Kim Day at the base of Croagh Patrick

The resulting painting, which now hangs in the National Gallery in Dublin, made a striking artistic choice — one that immediately divided opinion. The summit of Croagh Patrick is nowhere to be seen.

"That was very much a conscious decision," Day explains. "I knew people might not like it, but I really wanted to tell the story. This is about human journeys — whether physical or emotional. There really is no destination as such. It's just the journey we're all going through."

Kim Day's landscape portrait of Croagh Patrick at the official unveiling

Dotting the path are lights representing the thousands of pilgrims who have climbed the mountain across the centuries. "I wanted to capture the sense of the soul of the people who have traversed that path," she says. "The light and energy of people — that was the way to express it."

In traditional landscape painting, cutting the summit from a mountain would be considered a significant breach of convention, and Day was well aware of that. "In terms of traditional painting, it's something you would never, ever do. But I wanted to be brave enough to make that choice. I wanted to say something more than just produce a beautiful image. There are so many images of Croagh Patrick already. I wanted to say something about us as people — about the light and dark within us, about why people make that journey."

The reaction has been, in her own words, "a bit Marmite." Some viewers have embraced the painting's philosophical depth; others have been considerably less forgiving. Day takes it all in her stride. "I think it's better to have a Marmite reaction than for people to just say, 'Oh, that's nice.' People remember it. Art has that effect. I'm quite happy to get the positive and the negative."

Fr Kenny was at the official unveiling in the National Gallery and his initial reaction was to understand her statement that a frame can’t capture a mountain. His second thought was to see it as a good thing, because “if people want to see the summit, you have to come to Westport. And if you really want to see the summit, you have to climb the mountain.”

For Kim, seeing the painting in the Gallery remains something of an out-of-body experience for the artist, who has had to rely on photographs sent by well-wishers to view it in situ. "I still have to pinch myself," she laughs. "It's one of those slightly surreal situations. I feel very, very lucky."

As for Mayo itself, Day is emphatic that her time there has not ended. She plans to return, paintbrush in hand, for a far longer stay.

"For any landscape artist wanting a real challenge and fuel for their work, Mayo is the place," she says. "The light changes constantly, the cloud formations, the variety of landscapes — it gives you literally everything you could possibly want. I would quite happily go out there and paint for a few months. That would be wonderful."

Kim Day's painting of Croagh Patrick is currently on display at the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin.