Painting In A Glorious Garden: Mount Congreve In June

Friday 13th June

This June 14th and 15th I’ve been invited to take part in a summer art festival in Mount Congreve in Co. Waterford. It’s called Art In The Gardens and it’s the second year of the event. It’s been facilitated by the good folk who steward the gardens and keep them looking so wonderful, and it’s the brainchild of Martina O’Byrne of Artform in Dunmore East, an art school where I have taught a few times. Mount Congreve is a stunning 17th-century Georgian mansion in Kilmeaden, set on 70 acres of gardens, and backs onto the River Suir. It’s about thirty minutes’ drive from Dunmore East and it opened to the public in 2023. It’s a truly magical place that you have to see to believe. There’ll be a weekend of paint-outs and classes in the walled garden, under the guidance of five tutors from around Ireland. There are endless avenues of rhododendrons and camellias, but the blooming season of those flowers is over, but Martina says the walled garden is at its best right now.

I set off on my journey after lunch. It will take three and a half hours to get to my destination, across Ireland and all the way to the coast at the very southeastern-most tip. The road is long, and I stop at a massive service station in Tipperary Town to get fuel, but manage to resist all the baked goods strewn about the place like sticky traps and the expensive bars of chocolate. A little further on I see a roadside shack selling Wexford strawberries, and I pull over. The shack appears deserted, but a plump and precocious-looking teenage boy of about 15 appears from around the back: he trails a cloud of cigarette smoke with him. He leans into the window.

“Four, eight or twelve?” he asks in a thick, presumably Tipperary accent. I tell him four, thinking he means the cost of each punnet in euros.

He hands me a punnet of enormous, crisp strawberries.

“That’ll be four euros so,” he says. I hand him a twenty euro note.

“Let me get my calculator,” he says, and starts to fumble on his phone.

“It’s sixteen change,” I tell him.

“Thanks!” he says, “you’ve saved me the bother of working it out!”

I can’t help feeling shocked, but I bet his atrocious maths are better than my terrible accounting. I drive off, excited about the strawberries. They are divine, as sweet and delicious as they look. Much nicer than sticky buns and rich chocolate. Plus, I feel virtuous, and I always say smugness is an underrated emotion.

I get to my destination just before six o’clock. Dunmore East is the end of the road, really, consisting of a hilly coastal village and a busy harbour over a network of steep winding roads. At the end of the road that takes you into the village, a low rise seaside hotel stands on the headland, its terrace extending to a sea wall, below which lies a flat strand of beach. The terrace isn’t huge – holding maybe forty tables of various sizes – and the hotel surrounds it on two sides. It’s always busy, and when you arrive at the hotel you can take a left into the hotel itself or keep walking down the slip onto the sand. Because everyone in Ireland has gone nuts for swimming, there are always people there, either in swimsuits or enjoying food or drink on the terrace. It means a great number of bare feet are tracking sand everywhere, which lends an informal air to the whole setup.

I’m tired, but I’m anticipating a gorgeous meal in the hotel. Artform and the Strand Inn have allocated to me one of the tiny cabins on the campsite at the top of one of the steep hills rising from the coast, three minutes’ drive from the strand. I dump my stuff, and when I get back to the strand the terrace is busy with holidaymakers. I see my colleague Sebastian Thommen from Cork settling down for his dinner. He’s one of the other tutors, a fine watercolourist. I join him and soon two more tutors arrive, Nina Ruminska and Dave West, both of whom work in oils. I have met Sebastian and Dave briefly, in passing, but I have never met Nina before, so it’s a real treat to get to know them all better over a drink or two and a meal. After some wine- and Guinness-induced hilarity, Sebastian drops me home in his van, as no one wants to navigate a Dunmore East hill unless they have to.

Saturday 14th June

I am grumpy. A dripping tap somewhere deep within the waterworks has awoken me around 3.00am. Searching for the source, I am the picture of a demented Victorian in my long white nightie and phone torch standing in for a candle, wandering around in the dark. But I can’t find the source of the drip, and I complete the picture of torment by tossing and turning until about 7.00am when I finally drift off to sleep. This means I am late arriving at the hotel for breakfast, having wasted a few precious few minutes looking for my beautiful Sketch With Roisin baseball cap, without which I feel hamstrung: I can’t BEAR squinting in strong daylight and am wedded to my peaked cap, especially when teaching, as I will have to screw up my eyes to focus on the work of the sketchers and their work. This will do nothing for my wrinkles. I head to the hotel and instead of grabbing a tea and a hurried breakfast, I insist to the young, pretty receptionist that she may well know where my cap is, that I have probably left it on the terrace the night before, and if she’d only go and ask the bar staff It’ll be certain to turn up. She’s a recent arrival to Ireland and her English is slightly halting, and she’s none too impressed with my intensity at this early hour. Because I can be a cow, it becomes a passive-aggressive standoff – we’re starting to glare icily at each other – but we’re rescued by an older Irish waitress who breezes by the reception desk and somehow calms me down. I make everyone hunt in the bar, even though it’s technically not open for another hour. The cap isn’t found, though, and although I see two of my colleagues silhouetted against a window overlooking the terrace, I no longer have time to sit and join them. Mount Congreve, where the festival will be held today, is half an hour’s drive away, and I have to be there by 9.00am. I beg a takeaway breakfast from the kitchen and a fork, and hit the road.

My drive is not a relaxing one. I am going a bit too fast. My phone is propped up in a bit of car not designed for the purpose so that I can follow the map, Google Maps in her wisdom having chosen winding country roads for my journey. There is a steaming cardboard box of Full Irish Breakfast on the seat beside me, filling the car with the hot meaty smell of a roadside diner. This is a tiny bit much for my current emotional and physical state. I’m upset because I’ve lost my favourite cap, and besides, I never eat breakfast; I certainly don’t eat strips of oily bacon, slices of lukewarm black and white pudding and huge sausages at this hour of the day, if ever. But in the interest of keeping up my strength I eat a little. At least I have a hot cup of tea balanced in the central drinks holder, sipping the too-hot tea adding to my generally distracted and less-than-safe driving. At last I arrive at the grand entrance to Mount Congreve, give or take a hasty U-turn or two. I make my way up the avenue to the house and realise I haven’t read Martina’s instructions properly for the arriving tutors. I call the undoubtably already-up-to-her-eyeballs Martina, but no sooner does she answer than Ray, the estate manager, drives up in his Land Rover to see who I am and what I want, and in the three-way-call confusion our wires are crossed and I’m directed to the wrong car park. I end up lugging stuff much further than I need to. Just before the mansion house itself, at the better, closer car park, I see my colleagues’ cars parked nicely (they haven’t arrived late) and I am resentful. I need to get a hold of myself. I greet Martina just outside the entrance to Mount Congreve House and she is her usual beautiful, smiling self. I force myself to wipe the scowl off my face (think of the wrinkles!) and not be a wagon to the helpful volunteers who are going to direct me to the walled gardens where I am going to set up.

But as I leave the walkways lined with post-floral rhododendrons that descend to the walled gardens and enter them via a stone doorway festooned with light pink clematis, then walk through immaculately manicured lawns, past white wrought iron benches and a magnificent Georgian greenhouse, the garden’s tranquility descends like a peaceful shroud. The scent of roses envelopes me in sweetness and suddenly I am looking forward to the day. Soon we are sitting along a walkway lined with lavender and roses. Rather than formally teaching today, my job is to demonstrate all day to the sketchers and allow them to look over my shoulder and see how I do it, so it will be a relaxing experience for all of us. I still feel anxious about my cap, and text Sebastian to see whether I left it in his van. I didn’t, but the trail is warmer – Seb remembers seeing me holding it. Then Ray strolls past and asks me if I am okay. I tell him about my lost cap and the mix-up with the car park – there’s something about Ray that inspires you to let it all out – and he tells me he will find me a hat. He comes back minutes later with two hats, one of which is perfect for the job.

I start to sketch, but the sky looks threatening. Luckily one of the volunteers must have been a mobile weather forecaster in a former life and she has made it her business to run around the gardens warning everyone when there is a huge downpour on the way. This is an invaluable service, as once you’re sketching you are lost in intense concentration and the last thing you notice is the vast black cloud of doom overhead.

After an especially urgent warning from her we repair to the greenhouse and within a minute our soft voices are drowned out by the roar of rain on the roof. A few fat drops make it onto us inside the greenhouse, but they are as nothing. I draw some plants, and explain what I’m doing, and why…

For your interest, the elements that make this look not awful are as follows:

• Accurate drawing
• Very limited palette
• Fatter lines on the outside, thinner ones inside planes
• Soft, un-outlined shapes towards rear
• Well-observed values – note darker bits under / next to foreground objects
• Not the worst perspective in the world

Soon it’s time for lunch. My new colleagues / pals are sitting around a table enjoying the packed lunch provided by Artform and the Mount Congreve kitchen. I don’t want the sandwich or the cakes but I do like the homemade shortbread biscuit sprinkled with black sesame seeds. Thank goodness for that pork-themed breakfast on the road.

There will be a demo by Nina Ruminska soon, of a costumed life model. The model, Anne-Marie Burke, sews her own clothes or finds them in vintage thrift shops, and she always wears outfits appropriate to the period when the house was in its heyday. Ray the estate manager passes by. Someone asks him if it’s true he was there at the same time as the owner of the house, Ambrose Congreve himself, and did he indeed live to be very elderly?

“Yes,” says Ray. “He lived to be 106. When he was 100, he was out riding and fell off his horse. Everyone thought that would be it. But he stood up and walked away, and lived another six years.” A man with a mission, no doubt: the gardens were very much his brainchild and life’s work.

Before Anne-Marie arrives, I draw the easel with Nina’s previous sketch of her pinned to it. One of the superlative volunteers, Caolfhionn, is having lunch off to the right in my sketch. She’s not a Billy No-Mates, I’m just not quick enough to get the people around her into the frame. You can see a glimpse of a stone urn peeking through the door to the gardens. Then Nina and the model settle down and I manage to position Nina right in front of her previous sketch. There’s rather a lot of artistic license involved – you can see the ghost of a pillar that I “removed” to make space for Anne-Marie, and I am happy I did so. I love nude life drawing, but I prefer drawing a clothed model, as I like the interest of all the drapes and textures (although I do love a near-naked subject on the beach, but that’s because painting sunlight on skin is endlessly enjoyable).

Nina swaps legs just after I start her foot, so she ends up with only one leg and no sole on her shoe.

After lunch the second session begins, and the rain starts thundering down again. I take shelter in the greenhouse for my demo, sketching the cacti in various stages of development. The area is small, but thanks to my trusty SketchPocket I can do the whole sketch standing up, start to finish. The sun comes out and soon it’s so hot in the greenhouse everyone’s faces are even pinker than mine, which is quite the feat. (Side note to my sketching colleagues across the globe: stop painting me pink every time you draw me. Thanks.) I pride myself on being heat tolerant, as my Irish friends are far more sensitive to heat than I, just as I am far more sensitive to cold than they. But eventually I melt, and I am in danger of losing all my vital liquids to sweat. I concede defeat and leave, the cacti sitting smugly on their shelf in the heat.

You can see precisely the same elements I mentioned above in this sketch: accurate (but very loose) drawing, values, etc etc.

Then it’s time for the opening of Paint Waterford exhibition that’s on display in a room off the restaurant. Artform and their partners Big Look have invited artists to submit a piece with Waterford as their theme. On the walls are landscapes of this lovely county, and as usual I feel a pang of regret that I never have anything to show, because all my work lives in a tiny sketchbook. Not for the first time, I feel I should stand up and be counted. My voice is well and truly developed and I know exactly what I want to paint – all I am missing is actually doing it. And perhaps a little know-how with different media.

The exhibition is opened by my colleague Dave West, a Welshman from Pembroke “with the shortest emigration journey in history”, who says a few words about landscape, in particular the Irish landscape, and his feelings about Ireland in general. It is rather moving to hear him speak of Ireland, what a marvellous place it is and his gratitude towards his adopted country. It’s easy to find fault with the place you call home, but sometimes the grass is green right where you’re standing. Especially in Ireland, I guess.

We mill about with glasses of wine and sparkling water until it’s time to hit the road. I drive back to Dunmore East with the scent of roses lingering in my mind. I’m still a little sad about my baseball cap, and I have one last look in my suitcase on the off chance it’s there. Sure enough, there it is amongst my spare t-shirts. The two glasses of wine the night before prompted me to pack my hat – I have no recollection whatsoever of doing that, and I wonder for the umpteenth time if it’s time to stop drinking. I feel I should go and apologise for being such a wagon to the hotel reception staff earlier, but I’m too lazy. Instead I head straight to the terrace, joining Dave West, our very own Welsh immigrant, for the Strand Inn’s delicious fish pie. Dave has recently become an Irish citizen, and in a burst of patriotism I make him a gift of my book Dublin In Sketches And Stories to take back to the campsite where he’s pitched his tent. Then I head back to my room: I’ve been transferred from the cabin with its dripping tap to the Townhouse, where a cosy bed and a TV await. No Victorian-themed wandering for me tonight.

Sunday 15th June

Today I will have seven students in a masterclass. We’re all installed in the greenhouse, seven eager faces ready to learn whatever I have to impart. Before I start, in strolls Ray the estate manager. He has a navy baseball cap with him.

“This is for you,” he says in his rich Waterford accent.

It’s a special Mount Congreve hat, with the name of the gardens and a bright pink rhododendron embroidered on the front. I actually don’t know whether it was a loan or a gift, but Ray if you’d like it back, give me a sec and I’ll check my suitcase…

I launch into the masterclass: I regard becoming very familiar with values as being essential to all authentic landscape, and I find myself coming back to it as my theme for a class time and time again. My motto as a painter is “colour gets all the glory, but values do all the work.” The students are engaged, gracious and focused. After a while we step outside into the sunshine to study the values in the garden greenery all around us, swathing the walls in curtains of ivy, clematis, Virginia creeper and roses. I show them how deepening the colours around the wrought iron benches makes them glow a brilliant white from the surrounding herbaceous borders.

Over lunch we are treated to the opening of an exhibition by Eamon Colman, who has been artist-in-residence for a year in Mount Congreve. The result of this work is now hung in the Peach House. It is intriguing, and makes me re-think my relationship with art. Eamon says a few words, and I imagine what it must be like to live in beauty and tranquility with nothing but your paints for company. I covet that assignment.

We resume our value studies after lunch. It’s tranquil there on the lawn, and the day is becoming warmer. By four thirty when it’s time to pack up, it’s hot. My plan is to hit the road to Galway as soon as I have finished for the day, but then Martina very sweetly asks me if I would like to stay an extra night as a guest of of Artform, and I realise that driving the three hours and more back to Galway in the sweltering sunshine is a stupid idea in the face of such a kind offer. By now I am really very uncomfortably hot, and the sweating is approaching unladylike levels. To make matters worse, I have to bring all the bags of superfluous kit I’ve brought for the students back to the car park, PLUS one of the lovely volunteers is helping me carry things and she’s very interesting and clever so I am blabbing away to her as we climb the path back to the car park, meaning by the time we’re close my speech comes in panting bursts.

The car packed, I call Martina to thank her for the weekend and for the extra night.

“Don’t talk to anyone, dear Róisín,” she says, “Just rest.”

“Well I had better tell the husband I’m not coming home tonight,” I say.

“Do that,” says Martina, “then don’t talk to anyone or do anything. Just look after yourself, have a lovely dinner and rest.”

What a doll.

As I drive back to Dunmore East in the hot evening sun, I have one thing on my mind: a dip in the sea. When I get to the Strand Inn I park my car and throw on the togs, and seconds later I am in the cold, fresh water of the strand at the bottom of the terrace. I am joined by Dave West and we splash about like seals (speaking for myself of course) and it’s heaven. Then we head back for more fish pie and Guinness and then – then – the best bit, we drive off to find something to paint, stopping at a cliff at the edge of the village. To stand there with my new friend / colleague, in silent concentration for the ensuing hour or so, until the light fades and it’s time to go home…the evening has been a magical one and it’s all thanks to Martina.

Monday 16th June

I rise early, with the intention of driving back before 6.00am. But I have to drop the room keys back and the desk isn’t manned until half past seven, and I will hit the rush hour traffic if I get the timing wrong: besides, I need to fill in a sketch I had started but had to abandon after thirty seconds, so I decide to whip out my SketchPocket, stand on the Strand Inn terrace and finish it, looking out to sea. There are already swimmers by 7.15am, and I add one or two extras as they arrive. The men say a couple of words to each other then splash about and go back in, but the English women who arrive a little later stand and natter, thigh-deep in sea, for at least half an hour. I wish I’d taken more time with them or drawn them bigger or something. I get the scale of everything completely wrong but the strong morning light right, then I ruin the light by forgetting my values. The women are much further out than in my sketch; the boat on the left is much further out; the man coming out onto the sand is dramatically wrong in scale and position. But I want to include everyone and everything, and it’s my book and my page, so I do – no one is the boss of me! Then the Strand Inn restaurant makes me a lovely breakfast of scrambled eggs and smoked salmon and I hit the road to Galway.

I’m happy to be home but I am sad to leave Dunmore East and the beautiful County Waterford. Luckily I will be back in September for another course in ink and watercolour – on the topic of light and shadow – and I am fairly certain there are still plenty of places if you fancy coming along. I myself am very excited to be joining Dave West as a student this July: high time I made a physical contribution to art, a personal expression that people can own if they wish, and the best way to do that is through a medium that lasts – oil.

If you would like to see what I do as a teacher, I have LOADS of free stuff for you. There’s my YouTube channel, for starters – hours and hours of me sketching and hanging out in beautiful places. Then there are a few free sample classes on my website which you’re welcome to watch as many times as you like. I have started offering a free trial for my Sketch Club each month, so you can have two weeks on me, absolutely commitment-free. If you love sketching or art in general don’t miss these nice things to do!

I should also remind you that you can come and sketch with me in person this year – and next. I am teaching in Poland in August as part of the USk Symposium 2025, and while that’s sold out there’s nothing to stop you coming to the city anyway and joining in the the hundreds of sketchers who will be there without tickets to the event. Then there’s Geneva from 4th to 6th September (in French), Dunmore East in Waterford, 19th to 21st September with the amazing Artform (see above!) where I will be teaching a masterclass on light and shadow in ink and watercolour, then after that it’s Dublin 27th-28th September for an urban sketching workshop (Spanish). Then it’s France and the Pyrenees 18th-25th October, but that is fully booked. In 2026 I will be in Greece in mid-April if you’d like to join us, and Italy in early October, but I will have booking forms for those some time soon.

That’s it for now – I’m getting hot again as it’s a scorcher in Galway…down to the sea for a swim with me!