Unique art exhibition in a beautiful café setting in Donegal Town

A chance visit by artist Claire Falconer to a Donegal Town café has led to a stunning and much talked about exhibition of her work.

Claire was sitting upstairs in Simple Simon’s café in Donegal Town a few months ago, and was very taken by the cork wall and the art that was being exhibited there. 

A conversation with shop and café owner Finbarr Rock led to a wonderful launch event and her own ongoing exhibition.

Born and bred in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Claire has lived in Rossnowlagh and hopes to make her home in Donegal.

She was house sitting in the area earlier this year, and became a regular customer at Simple Simon’s.

“I started looking at the walls and thinking, ‘gosh, what is the story here, this is just a dream space’” said Claire.

“Deborah Stockdale had batik pieces up and it turned out that she was due to take them down the day after I enquired, and they had nothing else arranged to go up.”

A launch event hosted by Maura Logue to tie in with St Brigid’s Day was the perfect springboard for what Claire conveys through her work, and indeed, to reflect the threads of continuity from ancient to modern, from spiritual to tangible.

Claire’s work exudes an energy that is empowering and distinctively feminine, yet is not in any way limited to a female audience. 

It touches something very profound, soulful, perhaps even subconscious in the viewer, and this comes from the heart of Claire’s creative process.

Her background may therefore be surprising.

“I studied Law and Spanish at Queens, with the dream of becoming a journalist because I had done work experience at the BBC with John Kelly who is from Enniskillen also,” she said. 

“I didn’t know what to study and he said, ‘well you could always study law, that’s what I did.’”

While it turned out not to be the career path she had envisaged, it led to a life changing meeting.

“When I was at Queens I met an amazing portrait painter called Ken Hamilton who completely opened my life up into the arts,” said Claire. 

“He basically taught me how to paint. The paintings that I did for the first 15 years at least were all classical representations of figures, and then landscape work and then I suppose I just grew in myself to realise that I had the technique figured out to a degree and I just had to be my own woman within it.

“That was paired with me doing a lot of work on myself, healing myself, shifting a lot of old stuff and getting into meditation and reconnecting with the land and the old Celtic lore, the seasons of the year. 

“I’m starting to bring all that into my work, to bring out visions - which is what I now know that I can call them - from within. It is a massive shift.”

Claire had the courage to leave her comfort zone and to follow this new calling.

“I just put the blinkers on because if I had thought about it, I would have stopped in my tracks and thought, no, people are not going to get this, they are not going to accept it, they are going to wonder ‘what on earth is she doing?’

“The amazing thing now is that it is really, really being embraced at a time when so much of that is to the fore. 

“There is a whole movement now called visionary art in the world which I only discovered this time last year. 

“All of a sudden I was researching these artists from around the world and I was seeing all these parallels, all the connections with the earth energy, the patterns in nature that ripple out and weave everything together.”

Claire has been very productive over the last few years, and choosing a selection for the exhibition was an interesting experience. 

“There are elements of the Celtic and of the Donegal landscape, but also hints at the equinoxes and solstices, and the old way of mapping nature that is very in alignment with the earth,” she said. 

The idea of doing something specific around the solstice, equinox and Celtic festival dates had been brewing for a while for Claire. 

“Last year and the year before I challenged myself to do a painting a day for 21 days running up to the summer solstice,” she said. 

This made Claire think very differently about how she worked. 

“I used to be such an absolute perfectionist and I worked and overworked and killed so many of the pictures I was working on,” she said.

“All of a sudden this challenge which I called the 21 Sun Salute, gave me so many gifts because it is exactly the way I would love to be creating, where you wake up, have an idea, or a dream from the night before, and the first thing that would come that day that was a really strong idea, I would say ‘right, that’s it.’

“And I had the anchor of the light or the orb of the sun, and beyond that, whatever came, came. It allowed me not to judge, not to hide things away, not to say they weren’t finished. 

“Part of the challenge was to timelapse all of the work at the easel and to share it on social media each day.”

Claire is considering doing the challenge again this year and putting a show together on that.

Her current exhibition showcases some of the highlights of her work over the last few years. 

And she has been getting lovely feedback.

The title of the show is Imbas Awakens. The word imbas refers to the old Celtic way of creating.

“It was mostly around poetry, where poets would go into isolation and fasting, and would basically call in divine inspiration,” said Claire. 

“And then they would essentially channel whatever came through. They were highly revered for being able to do it, and they were considered seers and were held at the right hand of the king.

“That was all imbas. The full phrase is imbas forosnai. It is something that St Patrick banned because it was seen to be too pagan and too witchery and uncontrollable.”

Claire also writes poetry, and has a background in film-making and there is very much a multi-dimensional feel to her art.

More information on Claire and her work can be found at www.clairefalconer.com

Anyone who wishes to view and experience Claire’s paintings for themselves can visit Simple Simon’s on the Diamond in Donegal Town over the coming weeks. And it is also a great place for a coffee or something tasty to eat!