Retreating to the edge of the world

Ballinglen Arts Foundation gives artists the opportunity to find inspiration in the wild beauty of Co Mayo, writes Aidan Dunne.

Chances are that if you regularly attend exhibitions of painting in Ireland you will have noticed how often references to Ballinglen - that is, Ballinglen Arts Foundation - turn up in catalogues and artists' CVs.

Sometimes it's in the small print, mentioned in passing, sometimes it's rather more to the fore, taking pride of place in terms of the very substance of the work. For, since its inception, in 1991, the foundation has made an exceptional impact on the work of a high proportion of the many artists who have worked there.

Ballinglen takes its name from the river running through the village of Ballycastle in north Co Mayo. West of Killala, close to Céide Fields, it is in one of the most beautiful, and also in a sense one of the most desolate, regions of western Ireland. Follow the road west and you are in Erris, a place that can, given the prevailing winds and rain, feel like the edge of the known world.

To the south of Ballycastle, the naturalist Robert Lloyd Praeger wrote of the car journey on the road between Bangor and Crossmolina, across the biggest bog in Ireland, as "almost frightening in its isolation". That was more than 60 years ago, but you still get a sense of what he meant in the sheer scale and emptiness of the landscape and the exposure to the weather. Not for nothing did Martin Gale call his outstanding exhibition of paintings made in response to a stay at Ballinglen Hard Lands.

With quixotic ambition, Ballinglen was established by two Americans, Margo Dolan and Peter Maxwell, both of whom had experience in the art world in the US as, variously, artist, gallery owners and artists' agents. They first came to Co Mayo in 1981, and, Maxwell has written, "immediately fell in love with Ballycastle - both its landscape and its people". It was not, he notes, and still is not, a tourist region, despite superb coastal scenery and vast tracts of unspoilt terrain inland, something he puts down partly to the "extraordinarily unpredictable" weather. In fact, he explains, north Co Mayo "has its own weather system" - one dominated by temperamental storms.

Predictably unpredictable weather notwithstanding, they immediately felt that they would like to spend more time there and that it would be a terrific place for artists to go and work. But in the absence of any viable mechanism for making either of these things happen, they left and got on with their lives.

The idea refused to go away, however, and within a decade they were back to stay, with plans to implement a charitable foundation that would give artists the opportunity to visit and work in and around Ballycastle.

From the beginning they envisaged Ballinglen as being unusual among artists' retreats in its level of community involvement. That is, artists who visit are allocated comfortable self-catering accommodation in and beyond the village. They are encouraged to bring their families, to experience the social as well as the physical environment.

Initially, disused classrooms in a local primary school served as studios. By 1997 the purpose-designed foundation building, in the heart of the village, was functioning. Now it comprises four studios with favourable natural light, a well-stocked art reference library and administrative and other facilities. The gallery space doubles every two months as the District Court. Work is well advanced on a substantial new printmaking studio - with printing presses waiting in the wings - which will significantly enhance the centre's facilities. There are plans to establish a printmaking fellowship, which will provide a lengthy residency for a printmaker who will oversee the studio.

By now the foundation has amassed a formidable archive of artworks given by visiting artists, work that enables a cycle of exhibitions in the gallery, but the aim is to build a more capacious museum to house and display the growing collection. Works from the collection, incidentally, have also formed travelling exhibitions at venues in Ireland and the US. An energetic schools programme is long established.

The foundation has clearly had a huge impact on Ballycastle. Not only does the centre provide a cultural resource for the community; also, the influx of a revolving population of artists and their families contributes to the local economy. Several houses are maintained by the centre. Close links have developed between many artists and Brian Polke, who runs Polke's general grocery store and bar, across the road. In fact he has built up quite an art collection over the years.

Ballinglen is a small organisation. As founding directors, Dolan and Maxwell do not draw salaries for their work - although they continue to work on a daily basis. They also continue as artists' agents in the US. Locally, Una Forde supervises operations at the centre, and Christine Tighe oversees accommodation. This small hub of activity radiates out into the wider fabric of the local environment in numerous beneficial ways.

One of those ways is very surprising. The foundation has a US affiliate, the Artist in Rural Ireland Fund, as a major part of its aim is to bring artists over from the US. This it has done and continues to do.

Visiting Ballinglen, you quickly notice that artists tend to come back. Their first stay is free. Subsequently, artists from the US are charged about half of the cost of their residency, Irish artists a quarter. But a large proportion of them are keen to come back.

Bill Freeland, a sculptor, and Magda Vitale, a painter, liked Ballycastle so much that they've bought a house and established studios there, out towards Downpatrick Head. They spend half the year here now. North Co Mayo has had a big impact on Freeland's work.

It has also been significant for the work of another US visitor, Stuart Shils, a painter from Philadelphia. Shils first visited in 1994. "Ireland," he says frankly, "had never been on my agenda." In the event he found himself drawn back year after year. Not only that: his experience of the watery atmospherics of the Co Mayo climate effected a fundamental transformation in the way he painted. Trying to paint the restless weather was, he said, "like stepping on a banana skin".

His brilliantly authentic accounts of light and space in western Ireland caused problems back at home when he was more or less deserted by his habitual collectors, who couldn't cope with the change of direction. But Shils is invigorated by his new work and philosophical about buyers. As he puts it, he's gained so much: new people, excitement and, inevitably, new buyers, people who do recognise and respond to what he's doing.

Like Freeland and Vitale, the Irish painter Keith Wilson, whose solo show at the RHA Ashford Gallery in Dublin consists of richly detailed Co Mayo landscapes, has bought a house and settled in the area. Another Irish painter, Pat Harris, who has lived in Belgium for many years, was brought back to painting in Ireland by visiting Ballycastle. Again, the impact on his work has been significant.

Meanwhile, his partner, the printmaker Linda Ruttelynck, has just completed a fellowship. Timothy Hawkesworth is another Irish artist resident abroad - in Philadelphia - who has been working in Ireland again by virtue of Ballinglen.

The roll-call of those who've visited and found useful inspiration, in some cases perhaps more than they expected, might include Donald Teskey, Mary Lohan, Nick Miller, Nancy Wynne-Jones, SeáMcSweeney, Norman Ackroyd, Marie Hanlon, Richard Gorman, Conor Fallon, Eamon Coleman, Aidan McDermott, Janet Pierce, Deirdre O'Mahony - in fact the list goes on and on.

It's customary to think of regional development in terms of multinational investment and high-tech industries. Ballinglen is a salutary example that, even in the harsh context of the global market, other kinds of development are still possible.

Ballinglen exploits Ireland's natural resources in an environmentally sensitive way, celebrating the landscape without destroying it. Not only does the centre, a modest initiative that required dogged determination and exceptional organisational skills, represent a cultural investment in the north-west; also, it is a reminder that, apart from myriad other benefits, a cultural initiative can contribute to the revitalisation of local communities on a practical level.

Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Ballycastle, Co Mayo, 096-43184, baf@iol.ie