Description
Book SynopsisMícheál Ó Gaoithín (1904–74), poet and writer, was born 3 January 1904 on the Great Blasket island, one of the six surviving children of renowned storyteller Peig Sayers and her husband, Pádraig ‘Flint’ Ó Guithín, a small farmer and fisherman.
Mícheál Ó Gaoithín became a fisherman after finishing primary school and worked on the family farm until around 1930 when he decided to follow his other siblings to Springfield, Mass., in the USA, in search of work. Lacking a job and being in poor health, he soon returned to the Blasket Islands. His interest in literature and folklore began at an early age and like his mother, Peig, he was a renowned storyteller.
Approximately six years before he died he took an interest in painting and drawing with the encouragement of the artist Maria Simonds-Gooding. A number of his paintings appeared in an exhibition on the Dingle peninsula entitled ‘An ghaeltacht bheo’ which opened in Dunquin National School on Easter Sunday, 1974. He entrusted his paintings to Simonds-Gooding and they are now held at the Muckross House Folk Museum outside Killarney.
This selection of 55 out of Ó Gaoithín’s paintings and drawings from his collection of 200 is accompanied by written responses to the work by novelist Éilís Ní Dhuibhne and art historian Catherine Marshall. This book is published to coincide with a special exhibition of Peig Sayers at the Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) in 2022.
Trade Review‘Stunning … figurative and landscape painting at its most curious and vivid. ‘The Island King’s Boat: the sea full of life at twilight’ – a small pencil drawing of ghostly fishermen in a curragh surging beneath wheeling seagulls is one such moment where the perspective and dynamism in the work seems to almost exceed the medium.’ Adrian Duncan, Irish Times
Irish Times Best Art Book of 2022
‘A wonderful Irish book … a gem’ Claddagh Records
‘A great tribute from one artist to another’ Lorna Siggins
‘[An] elegant edition … Ó Gaoithín’s art documented the subsistence living of the Blaskets, as he painted scenes of night fishing, seal clubbing, cattle moving and mending of nets, and relived events such as Halloween and island funerals. There were more representations of Peig, and also of the fauna of the Blaskets, including goats and puffins. As President Michael D Higgins says in the introduction, this was “beautifully primitive artwork that celebrated a yearning for the Blaskets of his childhood”.’ John Burns, Irish Times
‘A beautiful, extraordinary book … a remarkable artistic talent ... what a legacy [Ó Gaoithín] has left us’ Treasa Murphy, Radio Kerry
