Athy mother and child image mirrored through time

A BEAUTIFUL mother and child photo reproduction was found by artist Cathy Callan after the recent ‘Beauty of Brigid’ art exhibition held at Art House in Athy.

This year’s Brigid festival hosted a wide array of activities, performances, and community days throughout the county. A two-day event took place in Athy’s Art House with the Beauty of Brigid exhibition, which celebrated women from all walks of life.

After the success of the workshops and talks with many visitors to the exhibition, artist Cathy Callan's sister Ellie discovered a striking coincidental resemblance between a photo from this year’s event and an art exhibition in 1992.

Back in the 90s, Cathy completed a ‘Mother and Child’ painting series, which featured a painting of her then-baby niece, Kate Dunne, and her mother Ellen Dunne. At the exhibition, a photo was taken of baby Kate in her mother’s arms as she pointed to a painting of herself, which was then published in The Nationalist.

More than 30 years later, history repeated itself when Kate attended the Beauty of Brigid exhibition and coincidentally had a strikingly similar photo taken of her and her baby Rose Deering pointing to a painting of St Brigid.

Both Cathy and her niece Kate had not realised the connection, until the recently taken photo was published in a recent  Kildare Nationalist edition.

The photos, though strikingly similar, were taken that way by coincidence and serve as a lovely and accidental record of the passing of time, artistically documenting the lineage of women in the Callan family.