Burrenesque

Artist's Statement

"Burrenesque" is the culmination of two decades of exploring, photographing, sketching and writing about the extraordinary place that is the Burren.

It is a personal presentation of my emotional engagement with a wild, nature-filled environment. Thus, natural themes - landscapes, and flora and fauna - dominate, but representations of historical and mythological, quirky and subtle, real and imagined themes, have somehow also found expression.

A variety of media and material - watercolour, coloured pencil and oil pastel on tinted paper, acrylic and pastel on wood and scraperboard - has been employed, in an effort to accommodate the exhibition's diverse thematic and subjective demands.

I remember clearly the intensity of my initial sense of engagement with the Burren and though living on the other side of the Island I knew that one day I would make it my home. What I did not realise was that this fascination would not only remain but would intensify and grow with the years. The region's international status as a plant and archaeological haven is well publicised and indeed celebrated but I have come to see this merely as a veneer; it is the concentration of diverse riches, both natural and social, tangible and aesthetic, historical and contemporary, that render this one percent of Ireland so unique. Nor does it end there.

To the casual wanderer the Burren emanates a strange mysterious quality - a product perhaps of the fluctuating fortunes and tragedies of the region's inhabitants, since the earliest times - the memory of which remains, to be released only at the pace of the drip, drip of the dissolving limestone.

Most visitors - passing through in coaches or cars - miss out on this; a fact that might be regarded, selfishly, as a saving grace. But in these days of increasingly sophisticated tourism and broadening education, this is no longer good enough: it is time for the immense potential of the Burren - particularly as an educational centre - to be realised.

We can only imagine the possibilities: the stimulation for learning; the wholesome sense of freedom; the potential for personal growth etc. Children from stifling urban circumstances, exposed to this wonderful outdoor classroom and playground, would be obvious beneficiaries.

I have seen the Burren change over the two decades, but a lot less detrimentally than many other parts of the west. The establishment of the National Park and the restriction of its interpretation to the peripheral villages has been crucial in maintaining the region's character. However, pressures attendant on agricultural intensification, land reclamation and housing trends threaten certain irreplaceable values - the quality of the groundwater, for instance. But a role of the artist is to expose and emphasize the positive and if I have occasionally strayed away from the celebratory, it is in an attempt to deal with some distracting bewilderment or other, immune to the assuaging word.

I hope this exhibition will help to focus attention on this extraordinary, precious and vulnerable place."

Gordon D'Arcy, January 2004