Bare Hazel
Maugherow, Beneath the Blowing Sands

Curated by Seán Golden; Maugherow beneath the blowing sands is a community response to historical events in Maugherow and environs. Entire villages were inundated by sand there in the nineteenth century. Historical texts and visitors’ chronicles describe the blowing sands and their consequences. Extracts from traditional emigration songs and oral history compiled by local schoolchildren in the 1930s combine with contemporary artworks, poetry and prose to give voice to the inhabitants, the anonymous victims of the blowing sands, the Famine and epidemics.

I…came to Ardtermon old Castle (court) and leaving it to my left, I crossed the distance, of at least a mile (which is covered over with sand) to the top of Knocklane. Here lies an extensive tract of land belonging to Ballynedan and Ballymuldory…which has been deserted by the inhabitants, on account of the sands having encroached, and overwhelmed most of the houses. In these sands, the old church of Ballintemple lies to the R. as one goes from Ardtermon (castle) to Knocklane. On the northwestern extremity of this sandy tract, is Knocklane...

-- Thomas O’Conor, Sligo 12 September 1836, Ordnance Survey Letters County Sligo

Observing the landscape is a continuous wonderful experience, where images are constantly recorded and the notion of the feeling, or essence of the landscape, rather than just the visual are conjured up from the familiar. The coastal peninsula of Maugherow, sits proudly on the north west of Sligo and has everything a painter needs to keep the preoccupation of engaging with one’s surroundings alive. The paintings evolve from layering, scraping, removing and reworking until the image reveals itself and is accepted as the resolution of the preconceived. I continue to interpret the land and water around me and can never expect to be finished.
— Paul Colreavy