Rare indeed is the artist who can fully master two mediums of creative expression. In that respect, writer and painter Emer Martin is a unique force indeed. Anyone who ventures to the Origin Gallery on Harcourt Street, Dublin to see her new show, Oh Rider Of The White Horse, will understand why when they witness the passion and energy that vibrates off the walls of the exhibition area.

“People imagine it’s difficult to work in two disciplines, and I’ve thought about this. But creative abundance was never my problem. I followed a path, and it led me on,” she says. Her palette in oils and watercolours is vivid and celebratory. And while her writing addresses international themes her painting explores very traditional Irish subject matter.
Emer’s first Hot Press interview ten years ago focused on her debut novel Breakfast In Babylon, which had won Book of the Year at Listowel Writer’s Week. Since then, her career has seen three critically-acclaimed books published in Ireland and the United States, the latest being Baby Zero, a dark trans-generational tale of three women born in an extremist Islamist state.
She’s always been open to new opportunities. In 1998, for example, Emer and this writer set up an Irish women artists’ collective called Banshee, visiting performance spaces in New York and San Francisco for two years, before the members scattered worldwide. Then, while living on America’s West Coast with her Persian scientist husband, she studied for a Masters in Fine Art at San Francisco State University. After returning to Ireland with her two daughters some years ago, she completed a short film set in Dublin entitled Unaccompanied.
In tandem with her writing she was developing an interest in painting. Her first exhibition of paintings at the Origin in 2006, Butter Boots And Paper Stockings was an artist’s dream: a sellout on its opening night. There was no turning back.
For her upcoming show, after a second spell at Noelle Campbell-Sharp’s Cill Rialaig retreat in Co. Kerry, she has returned with a series of pieces influenced by Seán O’Conaill, a Seanchaí who lived in the locality.
“When you read the old oral tradition, you can see that the stories are intensely erotic, very sexual, although we were never told that,” says Emer. “For example, in one of the stories – ‘The Bull Bhalbhae’ – the Princess wants to marry a bull that is a man for half of the day. So she asks him to be a man by night and bull by day. I thought hey, that’s kind of sexy! These are the real stories. They weren’t afraid of sex.”
From these stories, Emer has distilled swirling, multi-hued images that both charm and disturb the viewer. “I was submerged in the folk tales – and had in them extremely violent images, like a hag’s hand coming down a chimney and snatching a mother’s child from her breast. But at that same time, I was glued to the news about Palestine and Iraq – and thought how that violent image is still relevant – in today’s context of war.”
In the exhibition, the importance of myth and indigenous lore is paramount, making us re-evaluate, especially in an Ireland that is increasingly internationalized, the potential of what she calls our “own stories”.
“Our generation is spoiled by travelling. I would be in Bali, or on a mountain in the Middle East – dying to hear local folk tales. But we have so many amazing folk tales ourselves, now is the time to explore them. Hollywood and the BBC don’t tell us our stories. If you lose your stories, you lose your soul.”
Oh Rider Of The White Horse will run through April at the Origin Gallery. You can see the full selection of paintings at Emer’s website: www.emermartin.com