When Pauline Bewick announced in autumn 2005 on The Late Late Show that she was to donate a major archive of her paintings to the Irish State, she generated much excitement and interest in Irish art. From Pauline’s first sketch in 1938, at the age of 2½, her mother Harry encouraged her and kept all her finished work, a practice Pauline continued into adulthood. She also kept all the correspondence of her career - letters, diaries and published work - which has now become a sizeable archive. However, it is clear when talking to the artist that she has very little interest in the past or in her own history. She lives in the present, looking and moving forward.
Bewick recently bequeathed 400 paintings from her lifetime’s work to the Irish state to form two permanent collections in Kerry and Waterford, and a further 200, many of which are featured in this exhibition, are destined to tour Europe and beyond from 2008 onwards.
Pauline Bewick’s Seven Ages Travelling Collection is arranged as a chronological journey from the age of two to seventy, ranging from the artist’s first small sketches created on a farm in Kerry in the late 1930s to the huge pieces she currently paints in that same county. In between, in the many intervening years, we journey with the artist across Wales and England to progressive schools with her mother Harry, their return to Ireland and life in Dublin, her teenage years and twenties working as an artist in Dublin and London, falling in love with Patrick Melia, starting a family and moving back to a permanent home in Kerry, while also encompassing international perspectives, in particular from journeys to the South Seas and Tuscany. Throughout all this time, Bewick has represented her life in sketchbooks, sculpture, on paper, canvas, etc, etc, pouring out her emotional and intellectual dreams, and building an empathy with those who have followed her journeys.
Pauline Bewick recently bequeathed 400 paintings from her lifetime’s work to the Irish state to form two permanent collections in Kerry and Waterford, and a further 200, many of which are featured in this exhibition, are destined to tour Europe and beyond from 2008 onwards.
A comprehensive catalogue of Bewick’s work is available in paperback published in 2006 by Arlen House, edited by Alan Hayes.
