Cork artist: ‘I’m constantly learning’

“NEVER in my wildest dreams did I think I’d be where I am today,” says Shanakiel-based artist, Helen Condon.

She will be selling her work at Art Source Cork which takes place at City Hall on October 6-8. The annual Art Source show in Dublin, Ireland’s biggest art fair, takes place at the RDS in November 10-12.

Helen, a mother-of-three grown up children, is busily painting in her studio, doing commissions and experimenting with colour.

“I create cheerful, bold and detailed paintings that lift the spirits, capturing the beauty of the Irish countryside,” said said.

Three years ago, Helen was approached by Ravensburger - one of the world’s jigsaw and puzzle companies - to create a painting for a jigsaw. The company, established in 1891, had seen Helen’s work online and felt it would suit an intricate jigsaw depicting an Irish scenic spot.

Kinsale was the chosen location. Helen’s painting featured a view from the high road from Scilly and Summercove.

During lockdown, she was commissioned by the company to create a second painting. Galway was chosen. Working remotely with a photographer, Helen painted a scene of a couple walking towards a tram in Cross Street for No.2 in the jigsaw series focusing on Ireland.

Helen’s son Darragh worked on the Galway image as he has qualified from MTU in creative digital media.

He adapted the image to suit what Ravensburger were looking for. I sent off the image to them and once they approved it, I did the painting.

From then on, Helen’s part-time artistic career has been on an upward trajectory.

“A lot of galleries showed interest in my work. I’m now in four galleries in County Cork; Castlemartyr House Gallery, The Boat House Gallery in Kinsale, The Loft Gallery in Clonakilty, and the Owenabue Arts Collective in Carrigaline.”

Because there isn’t much gallery space in Cork city, Helen has attempted to get something like Dublin’s ‘The People’s Art’ going here. Artists display their paintings at the weekend on walls and railings in the Merrion Square area.

“It’s hard to get anything like that moving in Cork because there isn’t enough support,” she said.

But Helen is delighted that, for the first year, Art Source in Cork will take place in the entire City Hall building. She goes to Dublin’s Art Source fair every year.

At City Hall, Helen will be showing about 30 paintings ranging in price from €150 to €3,000.

“The town and cityscapes are as I see them. I tend to use very vibrant colours. People say to me the paintings look like Cork in the Mediterranean. 

They have that kind of warmth and feel to them.

“I also do floral scenes and seascapes. I don’t stick to one thing because I’d get bored. I keep moving and I’m constantly learning.

“The detailed city and town paintings would start with a photograph. Sometimes, I work with photographers and I credit them if I use their images.”

Helen’s floral paintings are influenced by how she is feeling. “The seascapes can be from my head and others are based on a particular area.”

While art is her passion, Helen is also happy to work part-time for an industrial automation company as a service controller, three days a week, adding: “It keeps my brain occupied.”

Would she like to work full-time as an artist? 

No. I think I have a nice balance. It would be too much to be painting all the time.

Helen often does commissions for people retiring or moving onto a new job. “Someone will come up with an idea and after discussing it, we might end up with something completely different. I like that process. It’s a collaboration.”

As a 15 year-old, Helen won a poster competition promoted on the RTÉ youth programme, Anything Goes. The brief was to mark 25 years of Ireland’s accession to the then EEC.

“I travelled to Brussels with Aonghus McAnally from RTÉ and met ministers from ten EEC countries. My poster was of hands clasping with the name of the ten countries written on each finger.”

As a child, Helen liked nothing better than receiving gifts of sketch pads and pens at Christmas. Her talent for drawing was obvious. She has no formal training apart from going to art classes ten years ago given by an artist called Maureen Cahill.

“She had the classes in her home in Ballincollig. It was wonderful. I actually had never painted up to that point. Although I could draw, I had never learned how to paint and mix colours. It was a total revelation to me that I could actually do this. Getting the right colours and balancing one against the other was amazing.”

Helen never saw art as a career. She studied it for her Leaving Certificate at St Vincent’s.

“I didn’t pursue it after leaving school, not until my kids no longer had to be brought to summer camp. When they were back at school, I knew it was the time to do something.”

These days, Helen mostly paints at weekends, working long hours if she has a deadline for a commission.

There’s a lot of office work to do as well, from getting the art out there, taking photographs of the paintings and loading them onto the website and doing promotional work.

Helen has a busy practice. And she finds it great for mindfulness. When she is painting, she is totally engrossed. Time flies by. Clearly, her second career is a source of great joy.