Killucan artist working on art project for Fleadh

A Killucan-based visual artist is in the research phase of an art project which will culminate in the production of a work that is to feature in Mullingar during next year’s Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann.

Geraldine O’Reilly, from Thomastown, Killucan, is investigating the history of those who “kept the traditions of Irish music alive” in Westmeath with a view to immortalising them in a large sketch or painting.

Geraldine hopes that this work will be exhibited in a shop window on Mullingar’s main thoroughfare when the Fleadh goes ahead in what will, hopefully, be a world recovered from the worst effects of Covid-19.

She has put in an application to Creative Ireland for funding for the project. “The idea is to honour musicians from the past. In the present, Mullingar and the county have so many connections to international music, but I hope this project will shed light on traditional musicians further back in history,” Geraldine told the Westmeath Examiner.

Famously, Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, the organising which drives Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann every year, first came together in 1951 months after the Thomas Street Pipers Band of Dublin came to Mullingar for a meeting with traditional musicians from Westmeath.

Among the musicians involved with Comhaltas in these embryonic years were the Moynihan family from Mullingar, Walderstown uilleann piper Willie Reynolds, and Castletown-Geoghegan musician Billy Whelan (composer of ‘The Westmeath Bachelor’), all of whose careers Geraldine is researching for her project.

Going further back, there is the renowned 18th century pipemaker and musician Timothy Kenna (Mullingar).

Geraldine’s own memories of traditional music centre on her fellow Killucan native, the late Seamus Creagh, the master fiddler who learned his craft from his neighbour, Larry Ward.

She has been looking at old newspapers, and talking to various people involved in Comhaltas locally over the years, and coming across lots of interesting details about the county’s past musicians.

She hopes to track down photographs of them, as well as any photographs of the Fleadh in Mullingar in 1963 which may exist.

“I hope to include not only our past traditional musicians, but also memories from our local associations with traditional music, like the 1963 fleadh. Some very distinctive posters were put up advertising past fleadhanna – and it’s things like that I’d like to reproduce,” Geraldine explained.

Geraldine is a former Fulbright scholar (1989), for which she travelled to New York to research Irish emigration to America. She has had many solo exhibitions and her work has been shown in selected group exhibitions in Ireland, America, Australia, France, Belgium, Sweden, England and Poland.

A former board member of Graphic Studio, Dublin, she was elected its chairperson in 2008. In 2004 she was elected to Aosdána for her contribution to the arts in Ireland. In 2007, she was short listed for the Golden Fleece Award.

One of her most recent Creative Ireland-funded projects centred on creating a visual record of life in her native Killucan through the family albums of older members of the community.

During Heritage Week last year, Geraldine invited local families to the Workman’s Hall at Rathwire armed with their family albums. The result was a fascinating art and heritage project in which decades – and in some cases, nearly 150 years – of family history in Killucan was brought to life. It is now housed in the county archives at Mullingar Library.

Geraldine said she came across some fascinating collections, including those belonging to the Boyle family – which go back more than 150 years – and some daguerrotype photographs belonging to the Purdon family.

“One photo in particular gave me inspiration for my current project – a photo of two unidentified travelling musicians playing fiddles outside the home of the Oxley family in Killucan,” Geraldine added.