Mary Stratton Ryan outlines the life of artist Elizabeth Rivers, highlighting the woodcuts she created of the islanders of Inishmore
Elizabeth Rivers spent eight years on Inishmore, the largest of the three Aran Islands off Galway on the west coast of Ireland. She recorded in her diary while living on Inishmore: ‘Time was a state of being in retrospect, in action, in direct relationship between people and the direct responses to nature, the tides, the seasons, the weather.’
Rivers’ interest in her fellow humans and her love of nature are evident throughout her work. She produced oil paintings, watercolours, wood engravings and, later in her career, stained glass, sculptures and woodcarvings. While living on Inishmore, she wrote and illustrated three of her four books: This Man (1939), which she had started work on in Paris, Stranger in Aran (1946) and Out of Bedlam (1956). She also wrote an article, ‘An Artist in the Western Islands’ (1947).
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