Talking to Joe about painting

THE SOCIAL NETWORK:Joe Duffy launched Norman Teeling's latest art exhibition and DVD, entitled Plein Air – painting in oil, at the Oriel Gallery on Clare Street in Dublin on Monday evening.

Duffy attends weekly painting classes by the artist Brian McCarthy and has painted a portrait of James Connolly,which was shown in Liberty Hall for six months. The Oriel Gallery has offered Duffy a solo exhibition if he ever wants one.

The art auctioneer Ian Whyte told me Sinéad O’Connor is selling two paintings for charity in his Important Irish Art sale on November 26th. The entire proceeds of their sale will go to the the Penny Dinners charity. One of the pictures is a 1974 pastel portrait of O’Connor as a child by Thomas Ryan (who currently has an exhibition on show in the Irish Architectural Archive on Merrion Square). It will feature on the front cover of O’Connor’s forthcoming autobiography. The picture carries an estimate of €5,000-€7,000.

The other picture is an oil by Neil Condron, entitled Upon Small Shoulders, which appears on the sleeve of O’Connor’s current album, How About I Be Me (And You Be You)?

After the exhibition, guests went upstairs to file past a Jack Yeats painting depicting a swan on Coole lake. Jack – and his his brother William Butler Yeats – stayed with Lady Gregory at Coole Park. WB wrote The Wild Swans at Coole and Jack painted this swan.

Who we spotted:The artist's brother and sister, Brian Teeling and Deirdre Keating; Riverdance accountant David Orr and his wife, Simone; the artist Tom Cleary; Dr Rhona Mahony, the master of Holles Street Hospital; Jane Mahony and Dr Peter Boylan.