Art Classes and Novel Inspirations

This is your new blog post. Click here and start typing, or drag in elements from the top bar.

Macroom, Co. Cork

Since the recession and my temporary contract in the  county library system ended back in 2009 I’ve had the pleasure of teaching  painting to some people in my local town, Macroom.  Ironically, I was asked to take over the class  at the library counter when a woman I knew was  checking out a book (the Englishman who’d  taught had become too elderly).   The  timing couldn’t have been better.   

Though a little anxious (did I know enough to be able to  teach them anything?) I attended the first class after taking every book on  painting out of Macroom library and the village library.   Research, research, research.   What can I say?  It’s the  historian in me and I can’t escape it.   Though I probably didn’t learn an  awful lot from going through these books, the act gave me the feeling that I was  creating some expertise.  In the  end I needn’t have worried.  They  were so friendly, so grateful for someone to just lean over their shoulder and  give them a few words of advice or encouragement, it wasn’t long before I  relaxed.    
  
It was at the tea break (of course there’s  one of those) that I realized that this experience would contain more than  art.  As I listened to these people  talk and discuss various things about what was going on in Macroom I realized  how much they knew of the history of the town, how much a part of the town they  were, some from birth.  Some of the  laughed and reminisced about how much things had changed I realized the huge  changes they had witnessed locally, changes that represented those Ireland had  experienced.  Macroom cloaks for  example (18th c. origin) were worn up until the 1970s by some women, especially to mass.   It was something you could wear to mass everyday and no one would be any  the wiser if you had your old pinny on underneath.  The  choir I’m in wear replicas sometimes when performing. 

---

Macroom cloak replica

Another  person in the art group remembered leading the family cow from their  house, down  the road in town to graze in one of the nearby fields. There’s  still a mart  twice a week in the town where cattle, sheep and miscellaneous animals are  auctioned off (farming is king in this country).    And of course  nick names.  With Marys and Seans in abundance there had to be ways to  distinguish one from  another.  One  woman in the art group, Sheila, grew up just near the bridge going into the town  and, to distinguish her from all the  other “Sheilas” was called “Sheila the  Bridge.”  

I just itched to record all of this information, conscious that  so much of this social history would be lost.  While trying to beat down the  compulsive historian in my head, the writer rose up and started musing on all  the wonderful stories each reminiscence generated.    You can never tell what will provoke a “novel”  thought. A headline, a TV  bit, an overheard exchange in a café.   You never  know.  For my  friend Frances Kay, her highly acclaimed novel, Micka, was inspired by her drama work with troubled youth in  Newcastle.  The novel’s power comes  the voice of the two main characters, two ten-year old lads, whose awful family backgrounds contribute to the terrible choices they make. 
 
See Frances Kay’s blog, www.FrancesKaywriter.wordpress.com.   Her book, Micka, is available from Amazon.

---