The visionary Golden Fleece Award gives much-needed recognition to the traditional arts, writes Aidan Dunne.

Painter Clive Bright was named last week as the winner of this year's Golden Fleece Award. The Award, worth €15,000 for the winner with smaller sums for runners-up, was established in 2001 and is funded by the legacy of the late Helen Lillias Mitchell, the weaver, painter and teacher. Mitchell, who died in January 2000, established the textile department of the National College of Art and Design, and her hope was that the Award would benefit Irish artists working specifically in the traditional arts.

Bright's work is centred on the family farm in Co Sligo. He deals with the contemporary realities of rural Irish life in terms of descriptive, representational painting.

In his application, he said that, if he was successful, he would use the award to upgrade the old farmhouse in which he works so that it would be "a dry, warm, functional studio".

Other artists on this year's shortlist were painters Geraldine O'Neill and Fiona Dowling, jeweller Clare Grennan, basket weaver Joe Hogan and metalworker Derek McGarry.

In classical mythology the ram with the golden fleece was intelligent, and could speak and fly. Phrixus, having escaped the persecution of his stepmother on the ram's back, then rather ungraciously sacrificed the beast to Zeus. He made the ram's fleece an emblem of prosperity and power. Jason, thwarted and cheated in his quest to win the fleece, stole it from the woods of Ares, where it was pinned to an oak tree.

The fleece's auspicious symbolism transcends the unfortunate fate of those who came into contact with it, including Jason. One of the essential features of the Golden Fleece Award is that it transcends the traditional divisions between art and craft. It encompasses not only the fine arts of painting, drawing, print and sculpture but also metalwork and jewellery, every aspect of woven textiles, stonework, woodwork, glasswork and calligraphy.

This breadth of interest is reflected in the work of the winners and runners-up to date. Last year's winner, Suzannah Vaughan, makes architectonic sculptural forms using glass and concrete. The previous year, painter Margaret Corcoran, who explores the language of style in representation, won.

The inaugural award went to Helen McAllister, who makes intricately embroidered shoe forms largely inspired by 16th-century Venetian textiles and shoes. Of the runners-up, Colin Martin, Mark O'Kelly and Mary Burke are painters. But weavers Rachel O'Connell and Clarissa Webb, woodworker Laura Mays, jeweller Anthony Carey and sculptor Ann Mulrooney have also featured.

There is a tacit recognition in the framework of the award that the traditional arts are under a certain level of pressure in the contemporary context. For a number of years they have tended to be overshadowed by new media.

The award's definition of traditional in this context is quite specific. It refers to representational painting, and to craft work that has its basis in traditional skills. Yet it would be wrong to see it as being conservative in character. The fact is that traditional arts and craft practices have an intrinsic and valuable role across the whole spectrum of contemporary creativity.

Throughout her career, Mitchell was exemplary in her respect for just those traditional skills, again not out of conservatism but because of her respect for experience. She realised that craft skills had developed over time and represented a wealth of hard-earned knowledge. Hence her keenness to study at first hand the work of spinners and weavers throughout Ireland. She travelled in Donegal, Connemara and Co Kerry, accumulating a fund of practical information which she published in book form and, more to the point perhaps, passed on as a teacher.

From her school of spinning and weaving in 1940s Dublin, she brought her students out into the countryside to find the natural sources of the dyes that produce the characteristic colours of Irish cloth. Vegetable dyes sourced from heather, wild flowers and lichens are colourfast. The colours they produce are beautiful and attuned to the natural vegetation of the landscape. As Mitchell remarked to a journalist in 1946: "They have no names and yet they are wonderful."

While Mitchell's work as a weaver and teacher can be seen in the context of a crafts revival, this term does not imply the contrived perpetuation of something defunct. Her visits to Scandinavia confirmed that traditional craft forms were amenable to contemporary treatment. They were, furthermore, culturally important and economically viable. Her visionary gesture in instituting and providing for the Golden Fleece Award ensures continued of the values she held so dear during her lifetime.

Those interested in applying for the Golden Fleece Award can download application forms from the website, goldenfleeceaward.com, request one by e-mail from goldenfleece@ireland.com or by post from The Golden Fleece Award, 26-28 North Wall Quay, Dublin 1