There’s a wonderful bookshop in Galway called Charlie Byrne’s. It’s mostly second-hand and remaindered books, with a few new books, some very lovely indeed (for example, An Urban Sketcher’s Galway by one Róisín Curé). Back in the early nineties, I found a book in Charlie Byrne’s that called my name. It is called The Helga Pictures, an exhibition catalogue of the work of Andrew Wyeth. On the cover, a red-haired woman in long plaits looks wistfully off to the left. The woman is beautiful, of German or Scandanavian heritage, and looks strong. You can imagine her rolling pastry. I read and re-read this book, cover to cover; I loved it. It was more than the love you feel for a novel or a memoir, it was visceral, wordless.
What was it about the woman that I found so compelling? Was it a premonition? A glimpse ahead, decades into the future? Of drawings of my own daughter with long plaits…rolling pastry? At the time I bought the book I hadn’t even met my daughter’s father, nor was even a regular sketcher, although I always knew that a big art life was waiting for me, and I drew and painted a lot, just not all the time.
Two or three years ago, my own girl, Olivia, had a request for a special Christmas present.
“I would love a calendar please Mum,” she said, “with just your pictures of me in it.”
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