Light into Darkness
Dymphna Headen is an Irish artist who had two exhibitions of her paintings in Slovakia in 2006. The first entitled “Light into Darkness” was at the F7 gallery in Bratislava from 10th to 30th April.
Roads to Harmony and Eternity
Dymphna’s second exhibition, “Roads to Harmony and Eternity” ran from 11th May to 12th June at the Merum Gallery in Modra, a town in the Small Carpathian Mountains that is famous for wine production.
Slovak Connections
Why Slovakia? Well, until she retired to her cottage in Ireland where she paints all her pictures, Dymphna was the first secretary of the Irish embassy in Bratislava. Here’s a photo of her with her partner Jan Dolman at the Irish embassy party for St Patrick’s day 2005 in Bratislava.
Art and Inspiration
Although Dymphna only retired from diplomacy in 2005, she isn’t an artistic novice. She has been painting and drawing since she was a child. Later she studied art and art history at college, and taught the history of art. In the late 1980s and early 1990s she worked as an artist from her own studio in Dublin.
As you can see, her style of painting is semi-abstract. She makes use of vibrant colours and strong motifs. The Irish landscape and its ancient stone monuments are her greatest source of inspiration and she incorporates legends from Ireland, Slovakia and other places into her work.
While visiting the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland, she saw a picture of a bird that someone had drawn on a wall. It lodged in her mind and later also found its way into her paintings.
Celtic Heritage
She feels a deep bond with Europe’s pre-Christian past and the philosophy and culture of the Celts. She has noticed similarities between the cultures of Slovakia and Ireland, which she thinks are due to Celtic influences. The Celtic tribes lived in Central Europe before they migrated westwards to Britain and Ireland. They left behind, not just the remains of their settlements and artefacts, e.g. at Devín Castle near Bratislava, but also, Dymphna believes, the names of places, rivers and mountains.
Here are some examples she has given. The city of Brno in the Czech Republic may have been named after the Celtic god Brian, and the river Danube, or Dunaj in Slovak, after the goddess Dana. The Morava, a large river that flows from the Czech republic into the Danube at Devín, has a name that sounds very similar to the Irish words for big river. The Irish word for life is pronounced like the name of the longest Slovak river, the Vah. Was it the River of Life to the Celts?
