![]() ![]() ![]() Maria Symonds-Gooding at work in her studio in Dunquin: a member of Aosdána, she was born in Quetta, before partition, when it was in India.Īs we pass through the house, various birds hop around outside, flying and following us from room, often coming up close to the glass. That way of life is dying out to some extent, but it has totally enriched my life and my way of work.” There is an additional lovely gallery space, adjoining the studio, which the public can access via a separate entrance. “When I first came to live here in 1968, people thought it was a strange thing to live where there were no artists, but I found all my inspiration from the way people sheared their sheep and built their stone walls. Her work is on the walls throughout, reflecting the Kerry landscape that has been her subject for decades: seals, sheep, cottages, curraghs and a dolphin. The original cottage has been extended back, to include an impressive modern studio, which includes an etching press. "That was the last spinning wheel on the Blasket, and it was about to be burned for firewood. On the wall opposite us is the wooden wheel from a spinning wheel. I bought it 20 years later for £810." Along with the house, she inherited a settle bed from the islander who sold it to her, which still stands in the front room. "It had belonged to a Blasket Islander, who had come off the island, and was now wanting to move to a council house in Dingle, " she says. Photograph: Courtesy of UCD’s department of Irish folklore Spinning wheel When she went back on land again, she heard of a cottage going for auction: the one we are currently in.īlasket Island storyteller Peig Sayers: her late son was a friend of Maria Symonds-Gooding and gave her the wooden fireside crane. So she snared, skinned, disembowelled, cooked and ate the rabbits? “I ate limpets and periwinkles and rabbits,” she agrees, surprised that apparently these hunter-gatherer skills aren’t commonplace to all. ![]() I knew how to do it humanely,” she says, matter-of-factly. When the divers left, she stayed on alone for three weeks, in a "tiny tent that let the dew in." This was prior to the island's purchase by the late Charlie Haughey. In the hot summer of 1968, she hopped on a boat with divers she met in Kruger's and got them to land her on Inishvickillane. She returned again and again to the area. The landscape on the drive in thrilled her, and then the community of musicians she discovered in Kruger’s. “It was Sunday, June 16th, 1963.” (Later, I check: the day was indeed a Sunday.) She was offered “a spin over to Dingle” with a friend, and so Simonds-Gooding, her accordion and dachshund dog Sebastian all landed in Kruger’s Bar for the first time. Simonds-Gooding is absent-mindedly eating honey as we talk in the front room of the cottage a beautiful, atmospheric space full of artwork, artefacts from her many travels, and other items from the Great Blasket a place that has had meaning for the artist most of her adult life. Instead, as a child, she was “always drawing”, and running wild and unsupervised around the 12 acres at the Kerry farmhouse the family bought and renovated. “Could I have been 10? 12?” she asks rhetorically. She is hazy about when she learned to read and write, but agrees it was much later than someone who had been traditionally schooled. I remember thinking if I was in Mountjoy Prison, that would be better, because at least I wouldn’t have exams there.” She was a pupil at the Holy Child convent in Killiney, south Dublin, for four years, where Maeve Binchy was also a pupil, two years above her. The family returned to Ireland when she was seven, but she did not attend school until she was 12. Maria Symonds-Gooding at her home and studio in Dunquin: “I found all my inspiration from the way people sheared their sheep and built their stone walls.” ![]() That’s why I am such an independent person, and why I love remote places and feel at home there.” “It was a time when parents never really wanted to see or hear their children. Aged three, she was once found a mile from home. “I was always running away,” she announces. ![]()
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