The Withering Sidhe
A Culture Night Exhibition: An Artistic Tribute to the Great Famine
Earlier this week, I visited the New Art Gallery Boyle to deliver and help hang my new painting, The Withering Sidhe. The piece was created for the gallery’s upcoming exhibition for Culture Night, opening on Friday, 20th September, with a reception from 5-8pm.
The exhibition centres around the theme of the Great Irish Famine of the mid-1800s, a period that continues to echo deeply through Ireland’s cultural memory.
A Folkloric Response to History
In The Withering Sidhe, I approached the famine through the lens of myth and folklore, blending the mystical with the historical.
At the heart of the piece stands a once-vibrant Sidhe (fairy), a being traditionally bound to the vitality of the land. Here, she appears frail and withered, her form echoing the devastation that the famine brought upon both the landscape and its people.
Her wings, tattered and dulled, feel almost like extensions of the land itself, broken, exhausted, and stripped of life.
A Folkloric Response to History
In The Withering Sidhe, I approached the famine through the lens of myth and folklore, blending the mystical with the historical.
At the heart of the piece stands a once-vibrant Sidhe (fairy), a being traditionally bound to the vitality of the land. Here, she appears frail and withered, her form echoing the devastation that the famine brought upon both the landscape and its people.
Her wings, tattered and dulled, feel almost like extensions of the land itself, broken, exhausted, and stripped of life.
Symbolism & Meaning
Cradled in her hands is a potato, mirrored by others resting at her feet. Their sorrowful expressions hint at something deeper than sustenance, they become symbols of both life and loss.
The potato, once a source of survival, became inseparable from the tragedy of the famine. In this piece, it holds that dual weight: nourishment and devastation, hope and collapse.
The palette leans into desaturated, earthy greens and browns, evoking a quiet fading, like a harvest that never came, or a landscape slowly losing its breath.
Land, Spirit and Memory
Irish folklore has long blurred the boundary between land and spirit, between the physical and the unseen. Through the figure of the Sidhe, I wanted to reflect how the famine might be understood not just as a historical event, but as a spiritual rupture.
A breaking point.
A moment where the relationship between people and land, so deeply intertwined, was irrevocably altered.
A Living Story
Through fantasy and symbolism, The Withering Sidhe becomes a way of holding that history differently. Not just as something recorded, but as something felt.
A story carried through the land, through memory, through myth.
An invitation to reflect on loss, resilience and the enduring connection between people, place, and storytelling.
Come and experience this exhibition of famine-inspired art this Culture Night at the New Art Gallery Boyle. The opening reception takes place on Friday, 20th September from 5-8pm and all are welcome!
📍 New Art Gallery Boyle
🗓 Friday, 20th September
🕔 5–8pm (Culture Night opening reception)
deireadh.
