Hi, I'm Gill
I'm a self taught professional sculptor and musician and my husband and I live and work on the west coast of Ireland, half way up a Kerry mountain on the Wild Atlantic Way.
I sculpt only what I know and only what I've lived and loved during my past three lives over my last six decades.
I sculpt the bliss of the connection between horse and ethical rider and the bliss of music making, both of which require precisely the same to achieve mastery - balance, rhythm, relaxation and vision, patience, love and the absence of ego.
I sculpt the horse in his most reactive state and cats being cats. I capture the tenderness of the nursing Jenny with her foal and without sentimentality and with anatomical accuracy, I feature the most underrated and misunderstood of animals, the donkey.
My sculptures are available in cast bronze and aluminium, in iron infused resin and in polymer clay.
"My First Life''
I never owned a horse but never grew out of my horse-mad teens, so trained to be a riding instructor. My first job was riding highly strung, highly priced young horses for one of the great figures of Three Day Eventing - Sheila Willcox. From there I ran a trekking centre, taking city kids out across the Welsh mountains on 50 fat and hairy ponies. I taught BHS exam students at a major BHS yard, on ex-racehorses, warm bloods and cobs, where I was the sole rider of a fine Cleveland Bay, before ending my horse career riding-out four mighty Shires for Friends of the Earth's first recycling project in Bristol city centre.
Horses challenged and grounded me and I loved their company, but not so much the physical danger or the attitudes of the privilaged class so prevalent in the horse world, so I left.
''My Second Life''
The fiddle became my second life after hearing Bothy Band in my late 20's and getting hooked. I'd just started a Humanity's degree when the music bug took hold and unable to find the time to do the work, I left it. I taught myself the music from LP's and tapes and from Bristol's Irish pub sessions where committed beginners are famously made welcome.
In the '80's I stumbled into a 5 piece world music band and for the next 10 years we played jigs and jazz, flamenco and Eastern European for UK audiences. They were 5 excellent musicians from Bristol, we gigged often, wrote our own stuff, played at parties and pubs, Glastonbury and WOMAD festivals and had a ball. Asked for lessons by friends, I started teaching and set up Bristol Fiddles, getting Tommy Peoples, Kevin Burke, Brendan McGlinchy, Paul O'Shaughnessy and Des Hurley to come and teach at my Bristol Fiddles Weekend Workshops.
I was bringing mini-bus loads of students over to the Willy Clancy week for fiddle classes every year, until Chris and I decided to set up here in Kerry and let students come to us. We moved over in 2004 and set up an activity holiday company for adults who'd never played an instrument before, so they could come for a chill-out style fiddle week and get stuck in. Most left able to play a polka and a jig, roughly in tune and knew to stay loose. They experienced the pub session and how this music's taught, heard it's regional accents and armed with recordings of the great and dead, left knowing how to progress back at home. Over 10 years we had students come from pretty much every continent, two came from an Antarctica science station and they'd never even met!
Teaching fiddle to beginners was a pleasure and a privileged I didn't take lightly. I still do a bit now but mostly play hotel gigs with blackmailed & bereft and a few trad sessions in the pubs around town.
Find more information about my band blackmailed & bereft here.
When teaching technique for both riding and fiddle, the teacher teaches the student to teach themselves by looking at their outline in a mirror. This helps establish a posture that's balanced, relaxed and efficient. Without realising it, this focus on outline in both my previous careers had directly set me up for my next - because that's what a sculptor needs to look at - the outline of a subject, not the centre.
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Find more information about my band blackmailed & bereft below.
''My Third Life"
My third life began 20 years ago when I discovered, quite out of the blue, that I could sculpt. I was making tiny items to go on my parents' 50th wedding anniversary cake and was astonished to see the tiny walking boots all but walking off the icing. YouTube taught me how to work the clay and I've been sculpting ever since.
Though my work is figurative I tend towards a simple line to convey feel and movement without distraction. I'm obsessive about accuracy of anatomy and a high quality of finish. Some of my pieces are playful but I hope they also shift preconceptions. Most of my work is serious, driven by a desire to promote kindness and respect for animals, some of it's about honouring good people and some address that glorious state of mind that comes when creating from an ego-free focus. All of my work, bar none, is heartfelt.
Beyond the Clay
blackmailed & bereft came out of the session scene in Kenmare, in the Kingdom of Kerry, on the Wild Atlantic Way on the west coast of Ireland. Anita Heffernan, Chris Liddle and Gill Newlyn have played together twice a week for 15 summers, developing a close musical understanding that is evident on this collection of original and traditional songs and tunes. The band are brilliantly supported by lots of exceptional local musicians.
The name of the band comes from two words introduced to the English language by the Border Reivers in the 15th Century – blackmail and bereave. The first, blackmail, was the original ransom letter and bereaved means the ransom wasn't paid, killed by The Reivers. The Liddles were a Reiver family in the 1500s and 1600s.
There are 11 tracks including traditional and brand new jigs and reels, polkas and marches, a slow air played on a tuned-down fiddle which was made by Remploy, and six songs. Five of the songs are original and one is an old traditional favourite.
You can listen before you buy at our Bandcamp page by following this link: https://blackmailedandbereft.bandcamp.com/releases
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“...they make a really lovely noise together... it has a lovely little catchy tune to this, I like it a lot.”​
Mike | The Mike Harding Folk Show
