Land's End - An Artist’s Journey to Glenlough 100 Years After Rockwell

3 October-14 November 2026
Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny, County Donegal

Exhibition 3 October-14 November 2026

Location Regional Cultural Centre, Letterkenny

Opening reception 6pm, Saturday 3 October

The exhibition

A Return to Glenlough

One hundred years ago, American artist Rockwell Kent travelled to the remote valley of Glenlough on Donegal’s Atlantic coast.

Drawn to isolated places, he came searching for somewhere beyond the familiar world - a landscape of mountains, immense headlands and restless sea.

The paintings he created there became part of a remarkable career spent portraying some of the world’s most secluded landscapes. Yet his time in Ireland remains a lesser-known chapter of that story.

A century later, Donegal artist Kevin Lowery has returned to the same valley.

Developed over three years, Land’s End grew from repeated journeys into Glenlough and a desire to understand the landscape Kent encountered in 1926. Lowery’s intention was never to recreate Kent’s paintings. Instead, he set out to discover how the same place might speak to another artist, working in another time.

The resulting exhibition brings together 19 paintings shaped by the changing light, weather and scale of Glenlough - and by the physical experience of repeatedly travelling into one of Ireland’s most remote coastal landscapes.

Artist’s statement

In Kevin’s Words

“I started this project with a seemingly simple intention: I wanted to stand where Rockwell Kent had stood.”

His paintings brought me to Glenlough, but once I began making the journey for myself, the landscape gradually took over. Reaching it was never easy. I carried paints, brushes, food, water and large canvases across steep and exposed ground, often spending ten or twelve hours on foot. The canvases caught the wind, the weather changed without warning, and the scale of the place made every journey feel different.

For several weeks, I stayed in McGinley’s Cottage overlooking Port Bay, close to the landscape Kent had known. There was no electricity, and the water came from the mountain. My days began with the walk across Port Hill and ended back at the cottage, looking over the day’s work beside the turf fire.

I wasn’t interested in copying Kent’s paintings or trying to see Glenlough through his eyes. I wanted to experience the place directly and allow my own response to develop. The paintings began outdoors, but they continued to change once I returned to the studio. I built and redrew them, exaggerated forms and colours, and allowed memory to alter what observation had begun.

The finished paintings carry something of the effort involved in reaching these places: the climbs, the weather, the fatigue and the long hours spent looking. They also carry my own way of seeing the Atlantic landscape - through colour, structure, atmosphere and movement.

I began by wanting to understand what Kent had found in Glenlough. What I discovered was that two artists can occupy the same ground and still encounter entirely different landscapes.

Each time I returned, I understood the place a little better and Kent a little more. Glenlough may have appeared unchanged, but I was not, and neither were the paintings I brought back from it.

Land’s End - The Book

The exhibition will be accompanied by an illustrated hardback publication combining the finished paintings, location photography and reflections on the three-year project.