Close to seventy people found their way down a country road in Derrykeel for the opening of Three Palettes, the first exhibition at The Shed.
Six months ago, three neighbouring artists in south Galway had an idea - and a shed.
On Saturday, August 29, they had a gallery, close to seventy visitors, and red dots going up on the walls all evening.
Three Palettes had opened at The Shed, a working farm building on the grounds of Fabiano Mulas and Valerie Woodlock's home in Derrykeel, in the foothills of the Slieve Aughty Mountains near Gort.
Whitewashed stone below, duck egg corrugated iron above, geraniums in pots either side of the door. The idea was hatched at the end of the winter, and in the months since, the building was cleared, fitted and hung.
Inside, the steel trusses and the corrugated roof were left exactly where they were. The work hangs on freestanding walls set between them, with hay bales pressed into service as plinths.
The three exhibiting artists work in very different registers, which is where the title came from.
Anna de Marigny paints in oil and cold wax, mostly with a palette knife, working from Rosewood Studio in Derrykeel, capturing a sense of place, the starkness of the Burren and the particular quality of the light in the west of Ireland.
Leonie McEvoy has an eye for the beauty of the everyday and for the detail most people walk straight past.
Fabiano Mulas, originally from Sardinia, documents the forest around Derrykeel and the Aughties.
"It was conceived at the end of a wet winter, when a thing like this always sounds easier than it is," says Anna de Marigny. "I was the one who suggested the end of summer, which seemed a safe distance away at the time. Three painters, three very different styles and a shed. It was a case of build it and they will come."
The launch was deliberately kept as a soft opening, with invitation by request rather than a public event, because none of the three was confident the facilities would take a crowd. Regardless, close to seventy people came through the doors
Wine was poured, a wood fired oven was set up, Basilico turned out pizza and snacks beside the paintings, and nobody was in any hurry to leave.
"We were not sure what to expect and we got seventy people down a country road on a Saturday evening," says de Marigny. "There were red dots. There was pizza. Everyone had a ball. It exceeded all expectations, and somewhere in the middle of it we realised we had put a proper cultural event on in south Galway, which is not a phrase any of us would have said out loud back in February."
Mulas and Woodlock have been approached about the possibility of other events in the space.
Enquiries of interest can be emailed to [email protected].
