How a lifetime as an architect has inspired Cork artist Harry Wallace

When architect Patrick L. McSweeney found himself in this situation, he and his daughter distracted themselves by creating a tiny model of a library.

It was to have a lasting effect on the Cork — and global — architectural scene.

Because Patrick, then the Cork county architect, returned to work and showed it to his colleague, fellow Cork architect Harry Wallace — who just so happens to be a latter-day renaissance man. “Patrick showed me the model and asked me if I could make a library out of it,” recalls Harry.

MODEL CITIZENS

Having surveyed the site, at a former water-mill at Bantry, Wallace prepared original drawings based upon Patrick McSweeney’s model. From these he built a larger working model for the now internationally recognised Bantry Library, which emerged in 1974.

Meanwhile, a design by Wallace for Fermoy Library became a meaningful proving ground for technical principles in construction and finishes applied in Bantry.

An almost identical sequence from model-to-drawings between McSweeney and Wallace would lead to the construction of Cork County Hall, which became Ireland’s tallest building in 1968.

But his portfolio of spectacular public and private buildings is only one aspect of Harry’s achievements.

LIVING GALLERY

After three-quarters of a century as an architect and artist, Harry has produced a body of paintings that showcase his diverse visual and creative talents.

A visit to his light-filled home in Clogheen, Cork, is in effect a stop-off in a living and life-affirming gallery with stories behind every artistic conversation piece. — all of which are expertly lit and arranged. “For me, art and architecture have always been inseparable, over 75 years in my life and work,” says Harry.

In fact, these rooms full of paintings are mere minutes’ walk away from Clogheen Parish Church, also a Harry Wallace design.

CHILDHOOD PASSION

Born in 1939, the artist and architect recalls his creative process as beginning at the age of four, when Wallace was awarded first prize of one penny for the making of a cardboard box house design during his kindergarten year at St Joseph’s School, Cork.

It continued throughout his childhood with the ongoing blending of colour pigments for paint-making at his contract decorator father David’s paint shop at Cork’s Victoria Cross.

CREATIVE PALETTE

Like many all-rounders, several disciplines converge in Harry’s artistic output — with music a keynote influence on his abstract paintings.

“I found common aspects in classical music and later in folk and popular music, in which I was trained, and those in visual art,” says Harry.

Wallace’s development in visual art continued into his teens at the Crawford School of Art in Cork where he later joined the city’s original School of Architecture.

Later, following acceptance to Brooks University, Oxford, he received the accolade for first place in architectural drawing, and graduated in Architecture in 1963/1964.

He continued to develop his understanding of the close relationship between visual art and architecture since.

ARCHITECTURE

During the late 1960s and early 1970s, Wallace taught at the Crawford School of Art and guest lectured at Bolton Street School of Architecture, Dublin, having worked in Central Africa for two years.

Some years after completion of Bantry Library, Wallace and Patrick McSweeney resigned from local government employment to advance into private practice in Killarney and Cork respectively in 1975.

VISUAL STYLES

Wallace continued his visual art practice throughout this time, producing canvases and sculptures in a wide range of styles over the decades including Narrative Painting, Cubism, Impressionism, Expressionism, portraiture, geometric abstract and, currently, free-form abstract work.

And fittingly for an architect, it is buildings that inspire the colourful abstracts.

“My latest work (First Light series) has evolved and developed over recent years, and is drawn entirely from reality of abstracted attributes of exterior architecture as its source,” he says.

These highly decorative paintings, in turn, enrich interior architecture — and it all come full circle, as he points out, since interior architecture is what “all paintings since prehistory depend upon for display and shelter”.

STUDIO DISPLAYS

For years, Wallace’s New Street, Killarney, architecture studio displayed many of his mesmerising canvases, an enjoyable distraction for his many high-profile clients from the reams of building plans.

Works then included his Kerry landscapes, “Abstract Fermoy Library”, “Space Within”, “Nude Torso in Clay” and his earlier “Stationary in Motion”.

A sense of place is evident in all his works — including the unmistakable light in the numerous paintings and drawings completed in the South of France prior to the year 2000.

LANDMARK BUILDINGS

Since the late 1970s he completed a wide range of architectural works including once-off residential projects, hotels, and religious, institutional, industrial and commercial buildings.

Notable among these are many landmark Killarney hotels, including The Gleneagle Hotel, The Castlerosse Hotel and Golf Resort, the Killarney Avenue Hotel and Imperial Hotel, Killarney.

His designs are as diverse as they are eye-catching and include the Klinge Pharma Plant, art studios for Pauline Bewick and Maria Simonds-Gooding, Kenmare’s Commercial Centre, Abbey Travel Headquarters, Dublin, and Culu Castle in South Kerry.

PILOT PLANS

And where would Leonardo da Vinci have been without his flying machine? Blue-sky thinking in a literal sense resulted townscape plans for Killarney as well as a proposal (decades ago) for a viewing tower and interpretative centre overlooking its lakes and National Park.

“While it was not later realised, the idea for the viewing tower arose from my low-level flights as a private pilot over the Killarney district,” he says.

Harry’s sense of space, time and memory which informs his painting was further heightened through his hands-on flights over Europe, and Arctic and Mediterranean regions.

HOME RUN

Home to roost in Clogheen, he casts an eye over his latest works, born of the same level of professionalism and commitment that has been a hallmark of his architecture.

“I see them as a further extension of my practice in the creative process beyond the strict discipline required during a long architectural career,” he says.

You can see Harry’s paintings at harrywallace.com