The Peace Process was still in its infancy when Margaret Warren, an 86year-old patron of the arts, now living in Castletownshend, Co Cork, conceived a unique idea. She wondered what the chemistry would be like if a Southern artist went North and a Northern artist came South to explore each other's milieux and landscape.
Margaret, Tommy to her friends, left Boston with her husband, Bayard, 12 years ago, having fallen in love with the west Cork fishing village. They bought an old boathouse hoping to restore it and live there. The restoration is now complete but unfortunately her husband didn't live to see it happen. It is now Warren's Boathouse Gallery and Mrs Warren's dream becomes a reality when the "Fair to Mizen" exhibition opens on Saturday.
Fair Head in Northern Ireland is about 350 miles from Mizen Head in west Cork. It struck Mrs Warren that though the physical distance between the two extremities was very small, the gulf dividing the communities was immense. "I was born in Texas where there was one ranch the size of Belgium. I was bemused to think that people who lived only a few miles apart were in other ways worlds apart. I wondered how the two places would be seen through the eyes of artists. So this exhibition was born." Dermot Seymour, a Belfast-born artist, was invited to spend a month living and working in west Cork, while Martin Gale, from Ballymore Eustace, Co Kildare, went north to the wild and beautiful Glens of Antrim. He hadn't been to Cushendall or Cushendun before and going there was like discovering "a well- kept secret".
During the time spent there - both artists made the exchange almost two years ago - his work reflected what for him was "a hidden and unknown place".
Gale found a whole new vista opened up when he travelled North. He did quick oil sketches, pencil sketches and took photographs to get as much visual information as possible in a relatively short space of time. Until May 18th the outcome of his artistic labours and those of his fellow artist can be seen at the Castletownshend gallery.
Was it worthwhile? "Absolutely, I would love to go back again. It seemed to me a place cut off by more than physical geography. There was the sense that people from the South were afraid to go there, to experience its beauty for themselves. It is a stimulating and dramatic landscape. The Glens are stunning. The interaction between the people and the landscape is a wonderful subject," he says.
For Dermot Seymour there were also new insights. In a few weeks it was hardly possible to capture everything he found in west Cork, but when he left he brought some of it with him. "I had been in west Cork before but I had never lived and worked there. The best way to put it is that the sense I took from it later became fused in my other work. It was a valuable project."
Mrs Warren also paints and has exhibited her work. "I hope you can make sense of the ramblings of an old woman," she says, making perfect sense. Her £6,000 investment in the project is, she feels, well justified. Mrs Warren has had a fascinating life. In 1929, she was one of only 99 licensed women pilots in America. The president of the Licensed Women's Club at the time was Amelia Earhart, who disappeared in 1937 during a flight over the Pacific.