Tony O' Malley attributed to Callan a quality of inwardness. “It was a feudal town with a wall around it”, he noted, speculating that this helped create a sense of detachment.
In his youth, he found that Callan folk were cool and aloof. They were great observers, yet there was always an underlying reticence in their demeanour. As in all small towns, Callan folk thrived on gossip and local banter.
The Catholic Church was all-powerful. It struck him as a kind of authoritarian regime that brooked no dissent. O’Malley treated religion with respect, but was drawn more to a simple spirituality. He inherited some of his father’s West of Ireland pre-Christian ideas. In Callan, he loved the mystic Abbey well which was deemed to have curative properties.
“I’m a Pantheist at heart”, he said proudly. From an early age, he wanted to get behind the seeming reality of things to probe hidden meanings. When asked about his conception of God some years ago, he replied: “God is that ash tree outside, the birds singing, and also the magpie competing with other birds for a grub in the clay”. He felt it was important to be at one with nature. “Children have this sense of wonder before the school system kills it”, he opined.
This communion with nature and the spiritual dimension to his life informed much of his painting. The sculptures at Jerpoint Abbey, near Thomastown, with their effigies of knights, ladies, swords, and wolfhounds, fascinated him. He was spellbound the first time he saw a large stone carving depicting the Twelve Apostles at Jerpoint and bemused by the fact that the Norman lords were in the company of their ladies in the carvings. He preferred these depictions to the sentimental images that abounded in religious art.
He was drawn to Celtic art, which regarded appearances as deceptive. “To those ancient artists”, he mused, “the descriptive thing was fraudulent, the image, the symbol was the truth”. He also loved mills, sketching them at every opportunity. There was one at the end of his garden in Callan. He liked its “solemn growl as it started up”. Even after 30 years of voluntary exile in Cornwall, O’ Malley still felt the “pull” of his upbringing and of the Callan landscape.
When he joined the bank in 1934, O’Malley was posted to Ennis in County Clare, before transferring to Dublin and Monaghan. In his spare time, he sketched fellow workers and bank customers. At the end of each working day, he made these drawings on notepaper, bits of cardboard or the pages of old ledger books. He learned to avoid showing this work to colleagues. Ireland of the period gave short shrift to budding artists.
He joined the army in 1940 but was discharged on health grounds when he contracted pleurisy. He resumed his bank job. In 1945, he fell victim to Tuberculosis; a disease that claimed many lives in post-war Ireland. While convalescing in a sanatorium outside Kilkenny, O’ Malley turned to painting and drawing. Owing to post-war shortages, he had to make his own paints from turpentine, linseed oil, and farmer’s pigments. The works he produced reflect the dismal circumstances at the time.
In 1958, he retired from the bank and devoted all his efforts to painting. Two years later, he moved to Cornwall. A colony of artists resided there. He thrived in the new setting, though the influence of his hometown and its people continued to affect him. The Celtic crosses and the religious motifs continued to exercise his mind and find an outlet in his work.
In 1973, he married Canadian-born artist, Jane Harris, whom he met in St. Ives. She opened up new horizons for him, introducing him to the tropical beauty of the Bahamas, where her sister lived. This exotic location seemed to transfigure his painting with its shimmering colours. The bleak tones of the Callan and West Clare landscapes gave way to turquoises, jades, and electric blues.
In 1977, the artist ended his exile. He and Jane bought the cottage at Physicianstown, Callan. When they moved in, there wasn’t even a mattress to sleep on, just pieces of foam on the floor. There was only one light bulb. But Jane’s creative genius and expertise as a gardener changed all that.
The cottage was extended on three sides and the garden became a lush wonderland. There was a fountain and a laburnum walkway flanked by dozens of trees. Other features were a pond populated by carp fish, a snow-white dovecote and an Aeolian harp. Named after the Roman god of wind, it sighed or wailed like a banshee with every breeze that passed through it.
Fearful of imposing on my hosts, I thanked them after an hour and a half had elapsed and prepared to leave. But Tony O’ Malley was anxious to talk of Callan in times past.
He was enthralled by local history. He spoke of James Hoban, an emigrant from the district who designed the White House in Washington, and the noted Gaelic diarist, Humphrey O’ Sullivan who lived there, as did several other celebrities.
To this roll of honour is added the name of Tony O’ Malley. Summing up his concept of art, he quoted a Chinese saying: “I would not seek descriptions, mere semblances of things. That art is best which to the soul’s range gives no bounds, something beyond the form, something beyond the sound”.
(Extract from: Kilkenny-People Place Faces by John Fitzgerald )
