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FOR A LONG TIME Kathleen Isabella Metcalfe Mackie was the forgotten woman of Irish art. Paddy Mackie knew his mother to be something of a “dare devil” – a glider pilot, a friend of the pioneering aviator Amy Johnston, a crack shot, a diver, an early skier, an angler who could sweetly cast a fly – but what he didn’t know was that in the 1920s she was an artist of distinction who studied under William Orpen and other leading painters of that period, writes GERRY MORIARTYNorthern Editor

A trip to an apple loft at the family home at Ringdufferin in Co Down on the shores of Strangford Lough, where he uncovered a treasure trove of her work, radically altered his view of his mother. That was in 1983.