Residency programmes are the life blood of the Ballinglen Arts Foundation, with each participating artist donating an artwork to the museum, writes Marie Bourke
The small thriving village of Ballycastle is midway on the road between Killala and Belderrig on the north Mayo coast. It is a lesser-known corner of Ireland where the first settlers farmed the Céide Fields more than 5,000 years ago, leaving Stone Age field systems with megalithic tombs preserved beneath the bog. Robert Lloyd Praeger, the Irish naturalist, described it as ‘the very loneliest place in the country’, although he did add: ‘I find such a place inspiring.’ So too did two Americans from the east coast of the United States: ‘The founders of the Ballinglen Arts Foundation, Margo Dolan and her husband Peter Maxwell, comprise two gallery owners from Philadelphia with a background in art, design and museum education who, in 1984, established Dolan/Maxwell, specialising in modern and contemporary art.
