Patrick Collins HRHA (1911-1994)
Heavy Water on the Bog

Oil on canvas, 40.5 x 49 (16 x 19¼)
Shaped, signed and dated (19)84; inscribed with title and dated (19)86 (Sic) verso

Provenance:...

Patrick Collins HRHA (1911-1994)
Heavy Water on the Bog

Oil on canvas, 40.5 x 49 (16 x 19¼)
Shaped, signed and dated (19)84; inscribed with title and dated (19)86 (Sic) verso

Provenance: The Eamonn Mallie Collection

 

This colourful work by Patrick Collins reflects the colour in my relationship with the original owner of the work my late friend and collector Vincent Ferguson from Sligo. We were both crazy romantics who indulged our passions with periodical exchanges of paintings. 'Heavy Water on the Bog' tells its own story, and Vincent's love affair with Collins' paintings. This work stirs many memories of a wonderful day in the late Vincent's ever welcoming home at Rosses Point where he and his wife Noleen were the perfect hosts.

When Paddy passed away Vincent decided to mark the occasion with the scattering of the artist's ashes on the waters of the Garavogue River in Sligo where Collins was born. Ciara Ferguson - Vincent's daughter who witnessed the scattering of Patrick Collins' ashes on the water crystallised the extraordinariness of the moment: of Patricia and Penelope Collins she said "Patricia was in a velvet cape and she and Penelope were like Patrick's handmaidens tossing the ashes where he played as a boy." Ciara continued  the image that stands out in my mind is the moment that the ashes are being scattered on the water to the strains of a lone piper, then in the background I heard the flapping of the wings of a single swan taking off from the water. It was just perfect."

Vincent Ferguson held the view that Collins saw his Sligo roots as a child as the source of his magic in his art and he feared that in returning to that spot where he played as a child the mystery of the place might be diffused. That spot was Collins' Shangri La. According to Vincent, Patrick Collins only returned to that river bank a few years before he died. I joined the ashes scattering gathering back at the Ferguson home for drinks and eats. My lasting memory of that afternoon was the sight of Basil Blackshaw, TP Flanagan, Sean McSweeney and Barrie Cooke all gravitating towards their own works on the Ferguson walls, ignoring their fellow artists' images.

Blackshaw, Flanagan, Cooke, writers Anthony Cronin, Dermot Healey and Vincent who were all present that day in Rosses Point are now all ar shlí na fírinne - ar dheis Dé go raibh an-anamacha. Tá an t-ádh orainn go maireann 'Heavy Water on the Bog'.

Eamonn Mallie

 

View more View less