The Holly Bough Podcast: Meet the Holly Bough cover artist, Peter Buckley
The new Editor of Holly Bough, Mary Corcoran with this year's cover artist Peter Buckley.
The streetscape captured so beautifully on the cover of this year’s Holly Bough is one that will be familiar to many.
The various elements will resonate with people differently though, depending on their memories of Cork city.
The artwork was created by Cork artist and illustrator, Peter Buckley, who wanted to capture a snapshot of the street as it is in 2024, while bringing in earlier elements of what the area once looked like.
While the centerpiece, the iconic Queen’s Old Castle building, is mainly true to what it looks like today, Peter says the signage on the building is more reminiscent of his memories of what the building looked like when he was a child.
“I’ve drawn the façade of it but the sign on it is as it used to look back in the 70s and 80s because that brings me back to the time when I was a kid growing up.
“I remember the Queen’s Old Castle as it was. I put the kind of Christmas decorations that were there then in the windows with those little baubles on the trees,” Peter says.
The surrounding shop buildings will be familiar to many too, albeit Peter says he has utilised some artistic licence here.
Morleys will be a familiar shop to many, while the toy shop and bookshop on Pana are somewhat new additions to the area.
“I’ve put children standing outside the toy shop looking in, because I kind of felt that’s reminiscent of what Christmas would be like,” Peter adds.
On the right is the postbox – a very important element.
“The way I see my picture is that it’s an early December evening, probably around 7pm in the evening. People are just finishing their shopping and these two kids are all walking with their dog and they decide to post their letter to Santa,” Peter says.
On top is a robin. “For good luck,” he adds.
Also included is a red car – a nod to Peter’s other passion – a 1969 Volkswagen Beetle.
“If you look closely enough, you’ll see the reg has been replaced with the numbers 25/12/24.”
The process involved in creating the piece was something that took time.
Peter said he started by capturing photographs of the building and surrounding streets, before sketching the buildings and details.
Once he was happy with the piece, he finished it with pen and ink, while watercolours brought the image to life.
Peter says he was inspired to try to capture this angle of the city as he is acutely aware of how different spaces change over the years.
He pointed out that in recent years planning permission was approved to redevelop the Queen’s Old Castle.
Peter’s passion for art and for capturing the streetscape is inherent to him. “It’s kind of in my blood really,” he says. Peter’s father, also named Peter, was an architect.
“As kids, he worked from home a lot, so we would have seen him drawing on his drawing board and, you know, he would have sat down some evenings and done some sketches with us. “We definitely have an interest from my father’s side of the family to the point now where my sister’s an art teacher, my other sister is an architect in Boston, and I have a sister in the County Hall as a town planner,” he says.
Peter believes his father’s own love of buildings and craft and architecture came from his mother who lived in Manchester and was involved in weaving and crafts.
She lived in a farm called Heyfield – the name of which inspired Peter’s own business Hayfield Studios.
His father’s sister is an artist in Galway, while his father’s brother is an architect in Dublin.
“It’s a family tradition really,” he says.
Hayfield Studios is a part-time enterprise as Peter works full-time at a software company in Cork, but he says art is his passion.
“In the evening, when I have that bit of downtime, I pick up the pen,” he said.
Peter says he’s very proud to be a part of this year’s Holly Bough – a publication he grew up with at home.
He has memories of his mother, when the Christmas Eve preparations had finally been completed, taking the Holly Bough from the cupboard and sitting down with it and a small glass of sherry to take a moment to herself.
He says his father-in-law, who has passed away, would be reading the Holly Bough long into the new year.
“I remember with the Diffney Quiz, he’d be ringing me up at work, saying ‘What do you think this means’ or ‘Can you google that’, as he had no computer. He’d be reading it right into Easter. I’d say ‘the Diffney Quiz now has been won by someone’ and he’d say ‘It doesn’t matter, I want to get to the bottom of these’,” Peter laughs.
Peter penned a short poem to sum up his own love for the Holly Bough.
Peter Buckley is an artist and illustrator based in Cork.
He set up the Hayfield Studio in 2006 and creates a range of prints and cards as well as commissioned pieces.
Read more at echolive.ie/hollybough
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