Thelma MansfieldRTÉ presenter turned full-time artist
OVER A decade has passed since Thelma Mansfield was regularly on television, but the former RTÉ continuity announcer and presenter still enjoys a huge recognition factor among the public.
At weekends in Dublin’s Merrion Square, couples wander by the selection of her paintings on display and nod knowingly on seeing her name on the railings. While she was being interviewed for this piece, former EU commissioner Pádraig Flynn also sauntered by with his wife Dorothy, and delivered the artist a jovial wink.
“The number of compliments I get about my previous life from people passing here is unbelievable,” she confides. “But a compliment about being a TV star is not nearly as important as one about my creative work.”
Mansfield spent over 30 years in RTÉ, the last 13 of them as co-presenter of Live at Threewith Derek Davis. But as the show came to an end in 1997, she decided to make a clean break by leaving Montrose in favour of a full-time career in art. "I wasn't interested in an office job or training and it seemed like a perfect time to change."
Painting was always in her DNA – as a child, she won the Texaco and Glen Abbey art competitions and two of her siblings are full-time artists.
Far harder than being out of the limelight was the practical adjustment to the rigours of painting, she discovered. “I found I was exhausted concentrating on this one thing, on my own, in a studio. It took time build up my stamina.”
These days, she divides her time between Dún Laoghaire and Spiddal, Co Galway, where there are “not enough hours in the day” to paint the primeval woodland around her studio. She dismisses any notion that her celebrity status might be an aid to selling paintings: “No one will part with their hard-earned money just for your name on the bottom of a canvas.”
She was just 16 when she beat 3,500 others to land the continuity job in RTÉ, but a dream job quickly became something of a gilded cage. Her father died soon after, making it impossible for the eldest child of a south Dublin family to give up a well-paid job. “Continuity wasn’t very interesting but the people I worked with were lovely,” she recalls. Presenting her own show was more satisfying but Mansfield wasn’t wrapped up in the fame game.
Married to photographer John Morris since 1972, she has two sons; one of them, Mick, is showing his own paintings beside his mother’s on Merrion Square.
“It wasn’t as though I wasn’t committed to my television career, of course I was. I’m a professional so I did everything I had to do.”
Offers came in from abroad but she was never tempted. “I had no interest. I love Ireland and I would never dream of leaving my family. I turned them down I didn’t want to create a monster for myself.”
