Niamh recalls her azure days

THE wild, windswept landscape of Clare is a world away from the exoticism of Arabian sands and azure waters. But for local artist Niamh Hickey, there really is no place like home.

Niamh has returned home to Clarecastle after spending 11 years living and teaching art in Dubai. This month, she launches her debut exhibition, Oman on my Mind in Scariff Library.
The abstract paintings were inspired by her travels in the Middle East, although she tells us that it was the landscape of West Clare that first influenced her art.
“I spent a lot of summers in West Clare, where my granny lived, and I really, really loved the landscape. The old textured buildings, the old stone, the trees, the beaches. All those kinds of textures really inspired me as a kid,” she recalls.
After graduating from the Limerick School of Art and Design in 1996 with a degree in ceramics, Niamh was offered a job in Dubai. “It was literally straight out of college and I thought, ‘what the hell, let’s try it out’.”
Remembering her early years in Dubai, she said, “When I went there, it wasn’t as well known as it is now. It was a very different place then, it was a lot smaller and quieter.
“It was very different to here, very different to anything I had seen, landscape-wise. It was very rocky, very sandy, very sunny. It never rained, it was always hot and dry. It was a far cry from West Clare,” she laughs.
“It was a huge adjustment for me to go there, culturally it was huge. At that time, Dubai was a very quiet place and there were very few people like myself, young, single white women.
“We were a very small group so I made a lot of friends, as you do under pressure, from lots of different nationalities,” she added.
But things weren’t always so different from here, she says.
“I taught in two international schools teaching 12 to 18-year-olds and the medium of teaching was English, so we all spoke English.
“The local girls are educated, they drive and their parents are quite open in comparison to other Arabic countries. They were lovely girls.
“They do cover up, they wear their abayas and shaelas a lot of them, unless they are only in the presence of other girls. But they’re just like any other kids, playing their games and everything else,” Niamh says.
She explained that she always had a fascination with the Middle East and its culture and took the opportunity to travel as much as she could while there.
“Dubai is a very modern city and when I travelled the country, where I spent the most of my time was Oman, which is just to the south. It’s a lot bigger than Dubai. It’s a lot older I guess and it’s a bit poorer.
“But it’s so rich in culture in comparison to Dubai, which is just modern glass and steel buildings. In Oman, you have old forts, 300-year-old Arabian souks and markets, gorgeous aged structures on the landscape in sandstone. I just loved them, I loved the whole look of the country.
“It was really the Arabia that I thought of when I was younger, the one of the A Thousand and One Arabian Nights. That was the Arabia that I was interested in,” she adds.
“Dubai is a very central area to travel from and because it’s on a land mass, you can drive to a lot of places if you want to. I’m a great traveller and I love to pick up local craft items when I’m abroad, I’ve brought back carpets and furniture, masks and textiles, anything tactile, I love the feel and the touch of different kinds of textures.”
After 11 years in Dubai, Niamh made the decision to return to her home here in Ireland.
“It was huge for me, coming back. I missed the whole Celtic Tiger, which wasn’t very smart of me, I went just before it began and I came home as it was finishing. But it was absolutely time for me to come home. I felt it in so many ways. I had done a lot of travelling and I was very happy to move back.”
While she is delighted to be back in Clare, moving home has had some difficulties, she admits.
“It has been difficult coming back into the current climate because it’s difficult to find work. I had two very secure well-paid jobs when I was away so that’s been difficult. But, no more than anyone else here and you just have to get on with things.
“Also, I had been absent from my family’s lives and my friends’ lives for a long time. I made it home every year but absence does maybe make a gulf there so I had to work very hard at those friendships.
“Because I was away so long, I missed out on all my artistic connections throughout the county. I have never exhibited here or shown here.
“I wasn’t sure when I came home what was available in terms of arts services. So one of my first ports of call was our arts officer, Siobhán, who has been a great support and helped me to finally get a studio at the Tulla Stables. She has really introduced me to what’s out there and what’s available.”
Niamh says once she was home the idea of going back to creating works of art would not leave her. “The colours of those trips in the Middle East and my memories of those trips, they’ve been going around in my head for years and years,” she says.
But with her background in ceramics, what made her decide to paint? “It was really down to logistics, when I came home I had no studio, no kiln and I’ve always been interested in abstract painting because as a person I would be very literal.
“I did a workshop with Rita Wobbe in North Clare two summers ago in abstract painting to try and loosen myself up a little and try something new.
“It was a real challenge for me to be so different in comparison to my normal, very literal sort of work. It was wonderful, it was very freeing and it really set me off on this path.”
While abroad, she took lots of photographs and along with her memories and artefacts brought home from her travels, they are what has inspired Oman on My Mind.
“I took a lot of it back with me, it really did inspire me. It’s a very vibrant country. I think people, when they think of the Middle East, the first thing they associate with it is religious issues and the issues of women as second-class citizens.
“But it’s so much more than that. It’s so diverse, you have from one extreme to the other in all the different countries.
“Where I lived in Dubai was incredibly modern, as modern as Hong Kong or Dublin or Paris. There was no diversification, there was no living in compounds or separation. But there is huge cultural differences of course, amongst all the different peoples. It was a fantastic experience for me to meet different cultures, it certainly opened my eyes to see how other people live. Not everyone lives the way we do here in Ireland but that doesn’t necessarily make it any worse or better,” she adds.
The exhibition features abstract acrylic paintings. “It’s about shape and colour and texture and memories. Memories of old forts and wooden gates and rusted metal, all the different textures of this architecture, which really is aged and worn and weathered. It dominates the landscape of Oman.
“It’s trips up and down the beautiful azure waters of the Arabian gulf on one side and the browns and the tans of the wood and the stone on the other.”
While she is delighted to be back in Ireland, Niamh admits that the memories brought back by working on the paintings brings a little poignancy to the exhibition.
“There is maybe a little regret there. I spent 11 years there and it was a huge part of my adult life. I have great memories, have had great times and made great friendships.
“I think when you work abroad in a country, very alien to your own culture, you very much rely on your friends. There is a little regret there but not too much. I’m very happy to be back in Ireland. I feel like Dubai is a place I really enjoyed and I will always be very fond of but I don’t have any great desire to go back.”
While her focus in recent times has been on this exhibition, Niamh says she has plenty of ideas for the future, including a return to her first exhibition, the landscape of West Clare.
“There is just something about the stones, the grass, the cows, the old buildings, the gates and doors. I would really love to work on that,” she concludes.
Oman On My Mind will be officially opened in the gallery in Scariff Library this Saturday at 2pm by county arts officer Siobhán Mulcahy and will run until February 26. All are welcome.