An exhibition of paintings by the artists of Tory Island, County Donegal, Ireland, opens on Thursday, March 3, at 7 p.m., at New York University’s Glucksman Ireland House, located at One Washington Mews (at Fifth Avenue). The exhibition, the first New York show for these artists, will be on display through June 1. Gallery hours vary, please call for a current schedule. For further information, call 212.998.3950 or log on to www.nyu.edu/pages/irelandhouse.
Present at the opening reception will be the painters Patsy Dan Rogers, the ancestral King of Tory, Anton Meenan, Ruairi Rodgers, and Michael Finbar Rodgers. Their work documents the environs of their island and a way of life rapidly vanishing from Ireland.
Tory is a windswept, exposed island off the rugged coast of Donegal in north-west Ireland frequently cut off from the mainland by storms and high seas. When painter Derek Hill visited the island in 1956 to take artistic inspiration from the landscape, a local named James Dixon took one look at his work and said he could do better himself. With Hill’s materials and a homemade donkey hair brush, Dixon went to on paint a large body of work and inspired others on the island to take up the art form. In 1968, four painters from Tory were featured in a show in Belfast’s New Gallery, and the informal Tory collective has continued to paint ever since.