Artist discusses his fascinating journeys to the Nubian desert and Sudan

A young boy born in Malinbeg could never have foretold a future that would see him travel to the edge of the Nubian desert, where local tribes built homes similar to nests turned upside down, helping Ethiopian refugees fleeing to Sudan and meeting his wife where the two Niles meet.
It was at national school in Malinbeg that Conal McIntyre first began to show signs of creativity. He sketched on the white paper that the Donegal Democrat newspapers arrived in at the local shop.
The two-teacher school stood in one of the most scenic areas in Donegal - located near the famous Silver Strand beach.
Conal’s teacher, Éilish Doherty often asked her young pupil to design posters and pictures for school events. He went on to win a scholarship and attended St Eunan’s College in Letterkenny.

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The draw of art
Following his tenure in the cathedral town, Conal went onto work as an air traffic controller in Shannon. However, at night he would find himself drawing and sketching and it wasn’t long before Conal found himself sitting at a desk at a Limerick Art School.
“For two years, I went to art school and allowed the two to operate together,” he recalled.
“After I finished in the art school, I came to Donegal and I had an exhibition with Kenneth King and it was there I met artists from county Down.”
The meeting would prove to be something that would dictate Conal’s path in life for years to come.
The talented young artist went to County Down to live with the artists. While there he noticed their dry stone wall had fallen. He rolled his sleeves up and got to work, fixing the wall.
The artists were amazed at Conal’s work and encouraged him to use his talents as a means to generate income. Uncertain of whether his enterprise would work or not Conal designed a sign and left it outside the County Down cottage and soon work started coming his way. He soon found that people from all backgrounds and areas were coming to him, seeking his services to fix and build dry stone walls - a welcome boost for the aspiring young artist.
“People began to stop and soon I had to buy a notebook and ended up taking a lot of jobs and working for a number of different people. The last person I worked for was the head of a major international auction house,” he said.

Project in Africa
Conal continued with his enterprise until he met a man who was coming through Northern Ireland and who was trying to raise interest in a project in Africa. He was fascinated and listened as the man described a location on the edge of the Nubian Desert where the Beja tribe lived. The Beja people are an ethnic group which inhabit Sudan, Egypt and Eritrea. Conal decided to go and help where he could. Soon he found himself working hard to help build a medical centre in warm and dry conditions.
“We made blocks ourselves out of sand. We had a deep well there and pulled up loads of water and you often found camel dung dancing on the top of it. The dry camel dung would blow into the well when there was a breeze,” he said.
The artist said there were no roads to travel on, no medical workers to attend if you were sick but he enjoyed it and rose to all the challenges reprsented. As they made their journeys, they would fill goatskin with water and hang it on the side of the truck and as the water bled through the wind would cool the liquid. Later Conal taught at an American school in Khartoum where no expense seemed to be spared. Conal remembers walking into the air-conditioned school.
At the end of the day, Conal would watch expensive cars pull out of the grounds while he jumped on a ‘rickety old yellow bus’ on his journey home.

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Home and children
After that, Conal flew back to England where he got involved with a Christian group who were trying to help Ethiopian refugees who were fleeing into Sudan.
Conal was familiar with Khartoum and soon found himself back doing all he could to help those who were suffering and at their lowest ebb.
It was during this time Conal met his wife, Heather: “We met where the two Niles meet,” he said.
After they married, Conal spent two years in Jordan learning Arabic.
He later returned to teach art in a British school. Heather and Conal are parents to two children who were born while on holidays in Donegal.

“Our kids came along then and we came home. We would be taking them out to Sudan before that where often there was no electricity and the fan used to break down,” Conal said.
On his return home, Conal renovated an old house and used a nearby shed as his studio.

Commissioning

Inspired by the stunning Donegal landscape Conal enjoys his trade. He works in pen and ink drawings, representational landscapes, semi abstract work and many other areas.
He takes commissions and can be contacted at hclaghill@gmail.com