Back in 2004, Siobhán Parkinson was a Waterford City Council, artist or writer-in-residence and she did good work with a cross-section of local writers. She went on to write for children and adults and is currently Laureate na nÓg – The Children’s Laureate of Ireland.
Her latest novel Painted Ladies was published by new Island and it is a functional exploration of relationships between an aspiring artist and interior designer Marie Triepke who married the famous Norwegian impressionist Peder Severin Kroyer who created a bohemian artists’ colony in Skagen.
Parkinson uses time shifting to create a fine sense of time from the late 1800’s into the turn of the century. There is the gathering of women who want to be more than objects in paintings, from a time when a woman wanting to be an artist was often frowned upon.
