The power of landscape at The Burren College of Art

The Burren College of Art (BCA) was started 30 years ago by co-founders Michael Greene and Mary Hawkes-Greene with the stated purpose of using “the power of landscape to inspire the creation of art.” Located in the heart of the Burren, in the Ballyvaughan area, the school has a small campus with a medieval castle tower at its center.

The Burren College of Art campus

Students come to The Burren College of Art from around the world. Many of them are undergraduate art students from universities in America and other countries who are doing a semester abroad, although the BCA also has a post-graduate program.

Most days, the students walk—sometimes for long stretches at a time—in the Burren, deep in thought while absorbing the surroundings. Then they return to the campus, which includes about a dozen art studios, adjacent to the castle.

This two-step process—of first going out in nature to be inspired and then holing up in a closed space to create—is a good example of the “outside-in” approach to creativity that I am exploring in my upcoming book. So, I wanted to spend time at the school to learn more about it, starting with a talk with its founder, Mary Hawkes-Greene.

Mary Hawkes-Green, founder of BCA 

The Inspiration Behind the School

Back in 2001, with the new school just finding its footing, Mary’s husband and BCA co-founder Michael Greene died suddenly from a heart attack at age 44. I asked Mary whether, at that difficult time, she’d thought about giving up on the fledgling school rather than try to run it by herself. “I didn’t really have a choice,” she says, explaining that she had loans to pay off and children to support. Moreover, Mary believed in the school and in her ability to run it successfully—though she admits that “it was hell” trying to get through the year after Michael’s death.

But the school continued to grow and gradually gained an international reputation. The main drawing card is, of course, the Burren itself. “It is generally accepted that the Burren’s stark lunar landscape and multi-layered terrain is a particularly powerful catalyst for creativity,” Mary says. “In my view—and after 30 years of experience with students coming here—the elemental connection to nature helps people connect with being human in an increasingly alienating world.”

Conor McGrady, a local artist who also serves as head of painting and drawing at the school, told me that it can take students a little while to adjust to the stark and remote environment of the Burren, but once they settle in, it seems to open up their thinking.

“Whether they are outside walking or inside their studio, they’re reflecting, reflecting, reflecting,” Conor says.

They are reflecting on what it is, precisely, they’re trying to express and the countless different ways they might express it. “Somehow, this particular environment just seems to feed that ongoing reflective process,” Conor says of the Burren.

I also spoke with Tiffani Love, a former BCA student who is now a working artist in Galway. She still teaches at BCA occasionally and stopped by the school during my recent visit. Tiffani hails from upstate New York and when she came to the BCA for its Master’s program, “it immediately felt like I was transported to an entirely different, surreal place,” she told me. It had a dramatic effect on her work—“the Burren made me want to paint every day,” she said. And now, even though she has moved to nearby Galway for practical purposes, she regularly returns to the Burren to walk in her favorite spots there.

Writing in a Castle

During my visit to the college, I asked if I could spend some time writing in the castle. I like to experiment with all kinds of writing spaces (churches, treehouses, even storage lockers) and I hadn’t tried a castle yet. I climbed the spiral stone stairs to the top floor of the tower. This upper chamber’s floor and walls are made of thick rock—which gave it a nice “cave” feeling.

Luckily, it was a cave with a view: A small desk and chair were set up by a castle window that looked out onto the Burren hills.

I settled in and wrote for a couple of productive hours, and nothing—not even a brief appearance by a German tourist who made the climb up the stairs and looked quickly around the castle chamber, seemingly unimpressed—could break the spell.