New Lives: When Denise Hogan left the family business to become an artist, she didn't go it alone, writes Lorna Siggins
It is known as "cold calling", and anyone who has ever worked in sales or marketing will attest that it's a challenging task. Denise Hogan can still remember the terror of it. "You're walking in with your suit and a folder, they don't know who you are and you are trying to get past reception to talk to the person in charge," she says.
Hogan has done it many times. She could be sitting in an executive's chair in a multinational corporation by now. Instead, the driven, young, single parent and former staffer with a Galway-based hygiene products company turned her back on it all and is now a full-time artist with her own gallery.
Such decisions can have a wide impact. Not only did Denise Hogan's life change, but so did that of her mother, Joan, to the extent that both are now well established artists in their fields. "The master of her own beliefs and vision, in visual terms" is how sculptor John Behan, RHA, has described Joan Hogan, noting that she "fulfils the proper role" of the artist. "She points the way, reveals the possibilities, does not explain," he says.
So how did it all come about? Who took the first step? Speaking to mother and daughter, it seems as if both moved in tandem, drawn by a subconscious voice that spoke to them both at different stages. Yet neither had any obvious need to listen, as they were in very secure employment - working for the family business, Connacht Wholesale Company (CW).
CW was established by Joan's father and taken over by her brother, Séamus, when he was just 17. "My father died, Séamus stepped in, and did one of the first business courses at the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology [ GMIT]," Joan recalls. "I wanted to be a dress designer on leaving school, but was told it wasn't practical and so I trained for nursing."
She married young and established a Montessori school at home in Newcastle, Galway. "My husband was based in NUI Galway's anatomy department, we were rearing our family, and then Séamus asked me to help."
Joan agreed and threw herself into sales, administration and organising deliveries of everything from toilet rolls to towels. At times, she found herself working beside her own mother, Nellie, who would pop in to help with stamping envelopes and other tasks, and lived to be 90.
It was a busy life, with three children to feed and educate; yet somehow, Joan managed to earmark a corner for herself. That corner was in her kitchen, where she painted while the family was watching Match of the Day. "I enrolled for classes everywhere in Galway, with just about every art teacher, but never really thought of taking it further than that. In fact, I think I was living a bit through Denise," she says.
At this point, Denise, her youngest, had taken her first steps in the art world, with her family's firm support. "I had wanted to go to art college after I left school, but I was 17 and just too young when I did the Leaving Cert," Denise explains. "I did a secretarial course, various bits and pieces, then became pregnant and had my daughter, Jade, when I was 19. We lived in Wales for a bit, and then returned, and I began working with CW as a sales representative," she says. "I remember going into Galway Crystal, and there were eight or nine reps competing with me for the same contract . . . but I got the order. I suppose I used my own sense of innovation. It was very hard, but when I look back it was the most terrific training for what I am doing now," she says.
Jade was five and had started school when Denise applied to study art at GMIT. "I continued to work part-time, scrubbed off the ink at 4pm, and somehow managed to fit it all into one day," she says. "I was studying with 18 and 19- year-olds who knew their art history from school, and all I had ever done was poster paints on paper."
She remembers her tutor, the late Hugh McCormick, summoning the students to pin their work up in the corridor. "He picked out work by just two of us - Aoife Quinn and myself - as the 'only decent pieces', and I won't repeat the word he used to describe the rest," she remembers. "That was the way he operated - there were 60-80 of us in first year, and only 20 of us graduated. He was preparing us for a much tougher world outside the protective walls of art college."
Tough as it all was, she convinced her mother to apply to GMIT also, and Joan graduated two years after her daughter. Her semi-abstract landscapes are inspired by the river Corrib, the sea and her environs, and she has participated in a number of group and solo exhibitions over the past six years, in Ireland and abroad.
Similarly, Denise's career has taken off. She has exhibited widely and moved from printmaking into painting. She was so broke one Christmas that she painted glassware for all her family, and then found herself selling it in the Galway market. "I just wanted to do fine art, but people were phoning me and asking me for wedding gifts."
Her delicately painted glassware became so successful that it enabled her to establish her own gallery a year ago, where she exhibits her own paintings, and work by her mother and other artists. She says that Anita Roddick, the founder of The Body Shop, has influenced her approach. "I believe you can do business fairly and decently, and I light a candle in the gallery every morning to put the best energy out there - because it will come back."
• Galway Rape Crisis Centre and the National Breast Cancer Research Institute are to benefit from a first birthday event at the Art Essence Gallery, Unit 7, Kilkerrin Business Park, Liosban, Galway on November 17th. The "blue and pink evening" at the gallery takes place from 6.30pm, and more details are available at tel (091)764770 or www.artessence.ie