Some invitations arrive as dates in a calendar. Others arrive like a hand on the shoulder. When Oughterard Courthouse Arts Programme committee invited me to take part in this year’s summer arts programme, I felt both honoured and steadied. An exhibition always asks something of an artist. It asks for work, of course, but also for trust. Trust that the private language of making can stand in a public room. Trust that paint, memory, colour, and silence can meet people where the