Greg DalyArt at its best can lead people to see the familiar in unfamiliar ways, and ‘Alive in Hope’, a collection of paintings portraying life in Maynooth’s St Patrick’s College, does just that.
In the collection’s 39 oil paintings, college president Msgr Hugh Connolly observes, Galway-based artist Sara Kyne has “caught so many places and caught them well with an artist’s eye, which allows you to see them freshly in a new way, even though it may be a very familiar vista or very familiar part of the campus.”
Mrs Kyne first suggested the project to Maynooth almost three years ago, following similar projects at Roscrea and Kylemore Abbey, proposing to do “a portrait of St Patrick’s”, taking in the college grounds and buildings and life as experienced there, whether by students and staff or by passers-by and visitors.
Austerity
“It’s very much that the college is portrayed as a living place by Sara,” Msgr Connolly says, explaining the title. “There can be an austerity around the cloisters or indeed the history of the college, and so a lot of the art here can reflect that,” he says, contrasting this with how “Sara has managed to capture the life of the college – and the life of the campus – in a very real way”.
This, he says, ties into the college’s mission. “The buildings are very beautiful – of course they are – but they’re ultimately the backdrop,” he muses. “The mission in some sense touches everyone, whether they’re people of faith or not. For the seminarians and the pontifical university it’s very much about the biblical message of hope. For others I think it’s also the whole sense of hope that comes from people who are learning, who are engaged in a common project, who are in some sense brimming full of the joy of bringing that to other people.”
The title’s two aspects of hope are brought out well in the collection, he feels. “We’d like to see that as the hope of the Good News, the hope of the Gospel, and I think that is captured between the very particular religious ceremonies that she painstakingly depicted – you can actually pick out faces and say ‘I know who that is’,” he observes.
“On the other hand,” he continues, “there’s also just the sheer exuberance of the glory of nature and the glory of people, making the most of everything that is the beauty of the campus – that in itself is a great sign of life, of hope.”
The paintings were worked on over two years, Mrs Kyne explains. “I’d start them there,” she says, continuing, “I’d have sketches, and would come home and draw them onto the canvas. I took some photographs as well to use as references. I would have tried as well to spend as much time as I could painting it there, but then there’s always the nitty gritty, like if you’re outdoors and you have the wind or the rain. They gave me a room to work in there as well, so I had a little studio space where I’d go up to and write notes and work away in peace.”
Describing how she would participate in conferral ceremonies as well as Masses and Adoration, and would paint portraits of staff or seminarians at work in their offices and library desks or even playing music or beekeeping, as well as children playing in the orchard or people strolling through the grounds, she says “I’m kind of sad now I’ve finished it, but you can’t keep going indefinitely!”
Praising how Mrs Kyne had been as unobtrusive as she was observant, Msgr Connolly says she was “a lovely gentle presence around the college,” such that the project was “a happy experiment and a happy experience for both of us”.
‘Alive in Hope’ runs daily from 11am to 7pm in the North Cloister of St Patrick’s College until May 15, with the collection being formally launched on June 6.