A New Life: Surgeon turned painter Kieran Tobin tells Michelle McDonagh that joy is now spending happy hours driving around the Irish countryside looking for inspiration.
Despite dedicating the greater part of his life to medicine, Kieran Tobin can't think of one thing he misses about being an Ear, Nose and Throat (ENT) consultant.
Since taking early retirement over a year ago at the age of 59, he has been far too busy indulging his love of painting. As a new exhibition of his work runs in the Kenny Gallery, Galway, he wonders where on earth he managed to find the time to do all that he did while he worked full time.
"I can't figure out how I did the things I did and still had time to go to work. The things I want to do fill my life completely now. Lots of my friends who are retired say the same thing, the day is not long enough."
When Kieran graduated in medicine at the then University College Galway at the age of 22, the youngest medical graduate in the country that year, it was very unusual for anybody to divert far from the career path they had set out on.
However, he always recalled his father telling him that the best time of his life was when he retired as a guard after 30 years and set up his own newsagency business.
It was always in Kieran's mind that he would retire by the age of 60, but it wasn't until the past five years that he realised how big a part in his life his painting was going to play.
What started out as a hobby some 12 years ago has now become a successful career in its own right.
Originally from Carrick-on-Suir in Co Tipperary, Kieran was just 16 years old when he started his first year of medical school. A year after qualifying as a junior doctor, he married Ann, the young Galway woman he had met at the end of his first year.
He spent five years working as a house officer at University College Hospital Galway (UCHG), then worked for seven years in England before returning to take up a position as an ENT consultant at UCHG in 1978.
For the 15 years leading up to his retirement, Kieran was head of the ENT Department as well as clinical co-ordinator of surgery at UCHG and professor of ENT at University College Galway.
While he loved being a surgeon and he loved teaching, Kieran never had any interest in the politics of medicine or in wielding power because of his position.
He explains: "While I enjoyed medicine very much, I don't miss it at all. A lot of doctors miss the constant contact with people when they retire, but I've always been a bit of a loner anyway. I'm quite happy with my own company so I don't miss that side of things at all.
"I am so interested in my painting that I couldn't wait to get the freedom to be able to indulge in it full time."
As well as spending more time on his painting, Kieran now has the time to meet other retired friends for coffee and a chat, take up golf lessons and oil painting classes and just relax and read the paper.
Over a year into his retirement, he still rises at 6.30 a.m. just as he did every morning of his working life, but there still are not enough hours in the day for him.
Now that his new exhibition is up and running, he will get into his jeep and spend many happy hours driving around the Irish countryside looking for inspiration for his painting.
He adores the bare bleak beauty of Connemara and the unique light of the landscape there which has attracted artists from all over the world. He loves the hills, rivers and trees of the Tipperary countryside and the colours of Wicklow in autumn and this appreciation of the beauty of nature shines very strongly through his work.
Kieran plans to spend a few months this year travelling and painting around California and the west coast of the US where the eldest of his two sons lives and he hopes to break into the art scene over there.
He is represented by Kenny's in Galway and by Combridge Fine Art Gallery in Dublin.
An easygoing person, Kieran never let the stress of his ENT work overwhelm him too much, but he points out that medicine as a career is becoming more stressful all the time, what with litigation, administration, bed limitations and shortages.
He adds: "I definitely found the last year or two a bit more stressful. I would not like to have gone on in medicine. I think I would have found it increasingly stressful as the years went by.
"As you get older, you can't take stress quite as easily as a younger person, it takes its toll.
"I believe that's why a lot of business people and surgeons die very shortly after they retire, those last few years of stress."
Kieran Tobin's exhibition Corrib Country continues at the Kenny Gallery, Middle Street, Galway until April 1st.