Litigants and offenders may find an unusual source of distraction during Galway's busy legal calendar next spring. The Arts Council has been asked to support the first exhibition of its type in a courthouse.
The initiative has been taken by Circuit Court Judge Harvey Kenny, who takes a keen interest in the environment he works in and has expressed concern about the state of courthouses in the west, such as Clifden in Connemara.
Working with him on the project has been Declan Holloway, portrait artist and course tutor in painting at the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology.
Judge Kenny said the Arts Council had agreed in principle to lend several contemporary paintings to the Galway court, subject to conditions yet to be agreed. Swinford courthouse displays artwork by John Brady of Westport, Judge Kenny pointed out, but the Arts Council link was a new departure. "It might make the courthouse more user-friendly," he said.
Holloway pays tribute to the assistance given by Mr Ruairi O Cuiv, a Dublin art consultant. Holloway is a respected artist himself, and was recently commissioned by the past pupils of Glenstal Abbey in Co Limerick, Judge Kenny's alma mater, to paint a portrait of Abbot Joseph Dowdall.
The Benedictine monk was Glenstal's first abbot and also first chairman of the Conference of Major Religious Superiors in Ireland. During his tenure the monastery became a centre for discussions and meetings on ecumenism following the Second Vatican Council and for the next decade. Abbot Dowdall died suddenly in Rome aged 39, in October 1966.
Holloway, who is a graduate in both painting (from the National College of Art and Design in Dublin) and printmaking (from Crawford College in Cork) spent a week in Glenstal preparing for the project, and was impressed with the educational atmosphere. Among his many commissions, including one of retired Judge Sean Fawcitt for the Bar in Cork, are paintings of the writer David Marcus and the singer Mary Coughlan.
Both of those works were commissioned for exhibitions in Kennys' art gallery in Galway and bought by Renvyle House Hotel in Connemara. His interpretation of Mary Coughlan won the National Portrait Award in 1992.