One of Colm's many tapestries

Weaving and its associated skills of sheep rearing, wool harvesting, spinning and dyeing were passed on within each family from one generation to the next. As a part of this tradition, Colm Sweeney learned the essentials of his trade at an early age. Weaving for him, like his peers, would be an important supplement to his income from hill-farming.

When he was still a boy, Colm's father died leaving the care of his eight children to his wife. Colm, the youngest child and the only boy in the family was left, obviously, with a deep sense of loss.

A priest who had been visiting the house in an attempt to bring some solace to the grieving family presented Colm, one day, with a box of paints and a few artist's brushes. The materials were meant to engage him in activity where he could freely express the emotions which had overwhelmed him.

The gift from this perceptive priest opened up a whole new world of possibilities to Colm. Through experimentation and sheer, native intuition, he learned, down through the years, to manipulate colour into representations of the Donegal landscape in its everchanging moods.

The colour in the wools he used in weaving Donegal tweed cloth are derived, of course, from the landscape itself and he reasoned that with not a little practice and patience, he could construct a landscape tapestry on his loom. So, independent of any local culture of tapestry weaving, Colm devised his own method of copying his oil paintings into the medium of wool. The demand for the work was such that he was soon to abandon the manufacture of cloth for his particular form of art.

".. his inspiration derives from a direct and intimate lifelong contact with the landscape, and an awareness of its subtle moods and seasonal changes which finds expression in the distinctive, vigorous simplicity of his tapestries and paintings, a style which has attracted many admirers not excluding the cognoscenti of Irish art."

Colm Sweeney gives exhibitions of tapestry making on a traditional loom in the Heritage Centre, Ardara.
There is no charge to see him at work or to view his collection of tapestries, many of which are for sale.