Dutch painter Clea van der Grijn had grand plans when she moved into this converted monastery in Co Roscommon - but instead of her changing the house, it changed her. Gemma Tipton pays a visit.
There's a seductive myth of the artist living in isolation, creating wonderful works that speak to the soul from a studio in the middle of nowhere. But is it true? Do artists need solitude to work? Or might the middle-of-nowhere send someone slightly mad? Moving four years ago from her Dublin studio to a converted Franciscan monastery at Granlahan, Ballinlough, Co Roscommon, artist Clea van der Grijn tested the idea. "Everything you do comes from where you are," she says. "The place you're in, wherever that happens to be, changes how you work, what you make."
The Old Monastery is one of those evocative, atmospheric buildings that make you wish you had the lifestyle to go with them. Sweeping steps take you up to the front door and into a massive space where a stove heats the thick stone walls. An internal window gives onto the chapel, a raw space where Van der Grijn is working on a large commission for the new hotel at Carton House. It's the kind of house where you expect to find large dogs and decadence, in spite of its former incarnation as a monastery and school. There seems to be something transgressive about living in a space created for religious purposes, now a place to hold parties, cook dinners, have arguments.
The original building dates from 1845, the first year of the Famine, and was enlarged in 1910, when a former pupil who had "done well" in America sent money to build the church onto the side. The place stopped being a monastery in 1950. "We were full of plans when we moved here," says Van der Grijn. Her partner Richard McDonogh was going to turn part of it into a recording studio, "and I was going to rebuild one of the outbuildings as a studio for myself," she says. "We were going to bring in extra money by running the main house as a B&B."
But the studio didn't get built, and McDonogh's work managing bands (Director and The Marshals) took him away from the B&B idea. Instead, Van der Grijn started painting in one of the downstairs spaces, and the whole direction of her work changed.
Probably best known for her collaboration with John Rocha at the Morrison Hotel in Dublin, Van der Grijn produces beautiful work. The paintings at the Morrison, and others from her travels (there is a series, for example, of misty blue images from Salto Ángel, or Angel Falls, in Venezuela), were, as she puts it, "direct translations of a visual experience."
Moving to the Old Monastery changed that. "It started with a dark painting I was making. It was as if I was trying to capture the aura, the essence of the house. When we moved in I threw myself into the whole thing, I grew vegetables, preserved fruit, but it was like the house was crying out for me to make work about it."
The works Van der Grijn made are not pictures of bricks and mortar. Instead, she began to paint figures and faces, inspired both by a statue of the Madonna, discovered dressed in peeling paint in the garden, and by the sensation of being isolated, thrown back on her own resources in a place where, despite the friendliness of her neighbours, she still felt like an outsider.
"This exhibition wouldn't have happened if I was living in Dublin," she says. "In town a house is a convenience, somewhere to hang your coat and have dinner. In the country it's a lifestyle, a choice." The house itself feels as if it is alive with its history, rather than merely being a box for living in. Working with architect Dominic Stevens (who was architect in residence with Roscommon County Council in 2005), Van der Grijn and McDonogh took out dividing walls to open up the space, discovering both rotting floorboards and wonderful original mosaic floors along the way. "For someone who doesn't believe in ghosts, I still think the house is haunted," says Van der Grijn.
That idea of haunting touches Van der Grijn's paintings: female faces and figures have expressions of sadness and thoughtfulness that linger in the mind. An abstract tree has a gold figure perched in its white foliage. "That's Oskar's tree," says Van der Grijn. Oskar is her 13-year-old son. "He used to love to sit in it when we first arrived. That's what I'll miss when we leave, the trees and the quiet."
And there's a sadness to that too, a sense of the paintings storing memories of the place for the future, because Van der Grijn and McDonogh are leaving, and the Old Monastery is on the market. They are moving back to Dublin with children Oskar, Maximillian Wolf (he's very clear about using his full name), who is three, and Orlando, 18 months. The couple, however, are splitting up, and hope to find houses near one other, close to the city.
"I don't know what would have happened if we hadn't come here," says Van der Grijn, "I definitely wouldn't have made this work. I wouldn't have had this idea of quiet and space. I always used to travel to make work, but I've discovered from living here that I can find that space in Ireland. Even in Dublin, you can just get in a car and drive half an hour down the road. I would never have realised what an amazing country Ireland is if I hadn't come here, but in the end I found I need to get back to the city."
Searching now for a house near to Dublin (she has a studio in Temple Bar), Van der Grijn intends to bring that idea of space and calm with her. "You find it if you go to India," she says, "it's incredibly claustrophobic, but the people there have a stillness, they can withdraw from the crowds. People in the country take that calm for granted, but it's a feeling I want to take away with me when we leave."
Clea van der Grijn's exhibition The Outsider is at the Roscommon Arts Centre until April 1st. Her work is available through the Cross Gallery, Dublin, 01-4738978.