Prestigious write-up for West Cork artist

FOR the second month in a row a West Cork artist has been featured in the prestigious Irish Arts Review.

In the autumn edition, the magazine featured an in-depth piece about the late William Crozier, and, in the winter edition, the writer Gerry Walker lauds the work of Cóilín Murray, who lives and works near Ballydehob.

Gerry Walker was so enamoured with Cóilín’s work he agreed to be the guest speaker at the opening of his exhibition ‘Islands, Songs and Palimpsests’ at the Doswell Gallery in
 Rosscarbery last weekend. The solo exhibition features all new work, including large scale oil on canvas works that Gerry Walker described saying: ‘He is an abstractionist in the true sense of the term, aware of the immediate and the past, synthesising thought, materials and technique, representing the whole of his experience and reflecting on the exigencies of his art with great skill and conviction.’

The gallery is open Thursday through to Sunday, as well as Bank Holiday Mondays, from noon to 5.30pm and Cóilín’s show will run from March 10th until Monday April 2nd.

As one of the founders of the West Cork Arts Centre, Cóilín has been a pillar of the artistic community here in West Cork. 

In fact, Peter Murray, the retired director of the Crawford, said ‘Whenever anything interesting is happening in the visual arts in West Cork, Cóilín seems to be behind it.’

Cóilín was born in Dublin in 1945 and studied at The National College of Art and Design and was, for a time, the head of print at that college until 1983, when he and his family relocated to Skeaghanore East, near Ballydehob, where he built a studio and has worked ever since.