![\"One](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/5035796_8_articleinlinemobile_Raven_20loch_20doire_20bheagal_2020260408_1_.jpg\" "\\"One")
One of Colm Murphy’s pieces in the new exhibition.<\/p>\nColm Murphy is an artist of the natural world. His watercolour paintings are highly detailed and lavishly coloured, and most are inspired by the birdlife and fish he encounters on his walks and angling trips all over the country.<\/p>\n
At least 35 paintings will feature in Murphy\u2019s new exhibition at St Peter\u2019s on North Main St in Cork, which will be opened on the evening of Thursday April 16 by the Reverend Gary Hastings, former Archdeacon of Tuam and Rector of Galway, and a noted Irish language enthusiast.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve known Gary for years,\u201d says Murphy. \u201cHe\u2019s about seven feet tall, and he plays the flute. He\u2019s a nice safe pair of hands. There’s nothing worse than big, long, boring speeches, but Gary will be grand. We’ll have a bit of craic.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Murphy\u2019s love of the outdoors was encouraged by his father, the celebrated sculptor S\u00e9amus, who brought him on long walks in his childhood. He took up fly fishing early, and speaks movingly of the beauty of places such as Lough Currane in Waterville, Co Kerry, long famous for its sea trout and salmon.<\/p>\n
One of Colm Murphy’s pieces in the new exhibition.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a strain of sea trout that\u2019s unique to Lough Currane and the river system going up to the three lakes above it. They\u2019re the biggest sea trout in the country,\u201d he says. \u201cBut Lough Currane itself is amazing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“There\u2019s an old monastery on Church Island, and a causeway running out to it that\u2019s five feet underwater. You wouldn\u2019t even know it\u2019s there, but the monks were able to walk out to the island, with the water up to their chests.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like many, Murphy bemoans the decline in the sea trout and wild salmon populations. \u201cThe salmon are fucked because there\u2019s no krill or eels in the sea for them to feed on,\u201d he says. \u201cThey\u2019re all being hoovered up for fertiliser. I mean, there\u2019s thousands of square kilometres of dead ocean out there now that sustains nothing.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven the mackerel are endangered. They used to come up as far as the Opera House in Cork. There were so many, they\u2019d force each other up the river, and you could catch them off Patrick\u2019s Bridge.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Starlings](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/5035574_18_articleinlinemobile_Gortleathard_2020260408_1_.jpg\" "\\"Starlings")
Starlings feature in one of Colm Murphy’s pieces.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He has noticed a similar decline in birdlife. \u201cThere’s species dying off all the time,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd what I’m trying to do is record them. Not that there’s anything new in what I’m doing, but it’s just to say, here, look, this is what we have.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“There are really complex things going on with birds, to do with the weather and the climate. I often think about the species coming and going, the chaffinches that arrive in Ireland in the winter, and others that leave for Spain. When you think of all the hoo-ha over immigration\u2026 birds are doing it all the time.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
He sees an intelligence at work in the natural world that is a far cry from the AI slop he finds himself being confronted with daily. \u201cSomeone just sent me an AI-generated video of a cat frying an egg,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI hate anthropomorphism anyway, but it\u2019s like, have they anything better to do with their time? We have this universe, a system that works fine, or would do but for our interference. But now we have AI condensing our intelligence \u2013 or our alleged intelligence anyway \u2013 and it\u2019s supposedly going to do everything for us, but it feels like it\u2019s just coalescing all our mistakes.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s why I\u2019m painting these pictures, to remark on what we had. The salmon of knowledge. The wise old owl. The ravens. They had the smarts. I found a fantastic quote from Leonardo da Vinci: \u2018Human ingenuity may devise various inventions, but it will never devise anything more beautiful, nor more simple, nor more to the purpose than nature does.\u2019\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Prices for Murphy’s pieces at the exhibition will be in the region of \u20ac1,600.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Murphy lived on the Sheep\u2019s Head peninsula in West Cork for many years, but these days, he is back in the house he grew up in on Wellesley Terrace, off Wellington Road in Cork city. The living room he uses as his studio is full of his father\u2019s work and that of his maternal grandfather, the sculptor Joseph Higgins.<\/p>\n
The place has a long cultural history. \u201cMy parents moved in in 1945,\u201d says Murphy. \u201cBefore that, the composer Aloys Fleischmann had lived here with his family.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Murphy\u2019s father S\u00e9amus was not his only influence as an artist. He also learned much from his mother Maigre\u00e1d, an art teacher who helped found Cork Arts Society and its associated gallery, the Lavit, which is still thriving today.<\/p>\n
Growing up in the 1960s and \u201970s, he was just as interested in music as he was in the visual arts, he says. \u201cRory Gallagher\u2019s mother lived down the road here. I\u2019d often pass him in the street when he was home for Christmas and we\u2019d say hello. His concerts at City Hall were magical.\u201d<\/p>\n
Murphy turned to traditional music himself. He mastered the bodhr\u00e1n, and played with the folk legends D\u00e9 Danann from 1988 up to their dissolution in 2003, featuring on albums such as A Jacket of Batteries and Half Set in Harlem, and touring all over the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He has also recorded and performed with the likes of the late M\u00edche\u00e1l \u00d3 S\u00failleabh\u00e1in, M\u00e1irt\u00edn O\u2019Connor and Altan, and has worked as a tutor with the School of Music, UCC.<\/p>\n
\u201cI still do bits and pieces,\u201d he says now. \u201cI do a bit of recording, and I\u2019m playing with Breannd\u00e1n Begley and C\u00e1it N\u00ed Riain at the Michael O\u2019Dwyer Festival in Allihies in June. I\u2019m really looking forward to that.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
There are, of course, correlations between his love of music and his interest in birdlife. One of his favourite stories concerns Amadeus Mozart and his pet starling.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne day,\u201d he says, \u201cMozart was walking down the street in Vienna. He was in the middle of composing a piano concerto, and the next thing he heard somebody whistling part of it down the road. He couldn’t believe it. How could anyone know the melody?\u00a0<\/p>\n
“When he ran down the road, he realised the whistling was coming from a pet shop he had visited before. So he went in, and there was a starling in a cage, and when the starling saw him, it whistled the melody back at him again.<\/p>\n
\u201cMozart realised that when he had been in the pet shop before, he must have been humming the melody, and the starling had picked up on it. Anyway, he bought the starling and brought it home. He kept it as a pet for three years, and he gave it a huge funeral when it died.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“When you think of Mozart\u2019s starling\u2019s intelligence as opposed to AI\u2026 that’s wisdom, isn\u2019t it?\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n