When Liam O’Neill started school, he walked there with his father. The Irish artist comes from Cnoc an tSeabhaic, Co. Kerry. His paintings are well known for their passion and movement, but this, he says, is something softer. “Sometimes you start thinking about the people in your past, the ones who made something possible.”
Among them is the family’s donkey. “My father brought a donkey to my Granny’s when I was about six. My Granny’s house was beside the school and I used to walk down to school with him,” he says. The animal became part of the family’s daily rhythm. “My mother used to say we wouldn’t have survived without him.”
O’Neill’s new sculpture collection is between from €15,000 for Caifé (40x30cm) and €39,000 for a dramatic funeral scene in bronze called House of the Boatman (45cm) depicting a traditional coastal funeral where the coffin is carried across the sea. “When I was a child, I remember seeing the coffin coming down the steps,” he says. Robin O’Neill was a legendary publican, and he recalls a powerful communal life. “That was our heritage,” he says.
