Lawson Burch, who died recently, continued the long tradition of painters who have found a considerable part of their artistic inspiration in the landscape of Co Donegal - painters such as George Russell, Frank McKelvey, Derek Hill, and many others too numerous to mention.
I first met Lawson Burch in Annaghmakerrig and found not only a painter whose work I admired enormously but a friend whose wit and humour were to enliven many convivial occasions when we were together. Lawson first came to Donegal on his honeymoon and this was the beginning of a relationship with the county that continued up to the day of his death there and that led him, 12 years ago, to uproot himself from the urbane seductions of the metropolis and make his home here.
Lawson was in many ways a man for all seasons: as much at home in the Arts Club in Belfast discussing aesthetics and Bernard Berenson with his peers as he was in Nancy's in Ardara discussing animal husbandry with a local farmer. He was a poet, short-story writer, successful broadcaster and raconteur as well as being a superb painter and one of his principal intellectual interests was the philosophy of Rudolf Steiner; but it will be as a painter that he will be primarily remembered and his works hang in public galleries and private collections in different parts of the world. His professionalism as a draughtsman and colourist - and he was the consummate professional - ensured that he would never do less than justice to the chosen landscape and the wit and humour of his conversation often found visual expression in paintings in which, sometimes, an old wellington or a girl's abandoned hat was tucked into the fabric as slyly as a joke into one of his stories.
Lawson was buried in the churchyard at Portnoo overlooking Inniskeel Island and the wide sweep of the bay. It had rained in the morning but the sun came out to work its old magic with enough trickery to delight the heart of any artist.
The world of Irish painting has lost one of its finest practitioners and I have lost one of those friends Shakespeare said we should grapple to our souls with hooks of steel. Our sympathies go out to Jean, to Timothy and Sally, to Simon and Marian, to Dermot, and to all Lawson's grandchildren.
F.H.