This article is from page 37 of the 2007-07-24 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 37 JPG
AN incredible 92 years in the mak- ing, Irish-American artist Ruth Mc- Namara-Duff stages her debut Irish exhibition at the Kenny Gallery in Lahinch this week.
Born in 1915, Ruth has worked as a professional artist in California all her life.
It was during a trip to her ances- tral home in Clare, however, that the creative seed for her latest series of work was sown.
““T visited Ireland in 2000, and went to the Cliffs of Moher. I was amazed at the beauty of them. I said, ‘when
I get home I’m going to paint LOO Cliffs of Moher’. I didn’t do quite 100 of them but it was a great inspi- ration to me,” she said.
“T have done a number of oils and watercolours of the cliffs. Even though they are similar in lots of ways, they are all very unique and CHES Keno) 0 me
Ruth’s grandmother, Ella Kennedy, left Clare at age 14, during the fam- ine, and sailed to San Francisco on a mammoth voyage through the Straits of Magellan on the southern tip of South America.
It was there that she met fellow Clare emigrant James McNamara,
who worked mining for gold in Grass Valley, and the pair gave birth to sev- en children, including Ruth’s father Owen.
“This journey is almost like I’m completing their journey back to Clare again. It’s like the end of a large circle. In a lot of ways, this trip is for my father,” she said.
“T feel that I wasn’t born myself un- til I was 40. I don’t think that I really found myself until then. You do get a different perspective on life.
“Right now, I am so eager to do things and to paint. I have a lot of canvases at home in my apartment and I know exactly what I want to do
with them.”
In total, Ruth has painted the Cliffs of Moher more than 60 times. She will show 15 pieces at the exhibi- tion, which she shares with Irish art- ists Tom Greaney, Roger McCarthy, Mary Horan, Michael Hanarahan, Deborah Donnelly, Marie Noonan McDermott, Carmel Madigan, Una O’Brien, Kate Beagan and Simone Walsh.
The exhibition features a wide range of styles and mediums and opened in Kenny’s Gallery Lahinch on July 21.
For more, check out www.lahin- chartgallery.com.