New Voyage for Limerick Artist - Eric Duhan 

By Kieran Beville

In a quiet studio somewhere between the Atlantic winds of Brittany and the remembered streets of Wolfe Tone Street, Limerick-born artist and author Eric J. Duhan paints both with brush and with pen. His latest creation, The Irish Girl II – The Journey to Brittany, the second volume in his acclaimed historical saga, has just set sail into the world — carrying with it the spirit of home, exile, and endurance that has long shaped his life and art.

The novel, now available on Amazon, continues the journey of Lucy O’Brien of Askeaton, the heroine of Duhan’s first book The Irish Girl. As political turmoil shakes Henry VIII’s Ireland, Lucy and her family flee from the familiar fields of Limerick and Adare to the storm-swept shores of Brittany. What follows is a story of faith, courage, and discovery — one that resonates with the experience of leaving and belonging, of carrying one’s homeland in the heart even when oceans intervene.

“This second book is the crossing,” Duhan explains. “It’s about leaving home — physically and spiritually. Lucy and her family must face the unknown, and through that journey, they begin to understand the meaning of faith and belonging.”

From the Shannon to the sea

For readers in Limerick, The Irish Girl II is more than a historical adventure. It is a lyrical map of familiar places — Askeaton Abbey, the winding Shannon estuary, the old stones of Adare — each rendered with affection and authenticity. These settings are not mere backdrops but living presences within the story.

“Even when the O’Briens reach France, they carry Ireland within them — the light, the loss, and the resilience,” Duhan says. “I wanted the story to remain anchored in Limerick. Those places of childhood memory, those sounds and textures of the river and the land — they shape who we are, even when we’re far away.”

A Limerick childhood in a narrow street

Eric Duhan was born on June 20th, 1954, into a post-war Ireland still bound by conservatism and struggle. The Duhan family of Wolfe Tone Street were well known in Limerick — people of music, faith, and fierce independence. “The wider world reached us only through books, the cinema, and the radio,” he says. “Religious art and music first stirred my imagination, opening the door to wider forms of creativity. Yet in a society suspicious of non-conformists, I learned to hide my true self. Each act of creation became both a rebellion and a step toward freedom.”

He attended Sexton Street CBS, where the Christian Brothers ran a tight ship but also — in Duhan’s case — nurtured an unexpected leader. He was elected school captain and became active in the Limerick Secondary Students’ Association, organising marches and debates, calling for greater fairness in education and a more open Ireland. That early sense of conscience never left him. “I have never separated art from politics,” he says. “Without a social conscience, art becomes mere decoration.”

The long journey outward

In the decades that followed, Duhan’s path wound through Europe and beyond. He worked with leading fashion designers, learned new languages, and absorbed the varied colours and textures of global culture. Yet even in the midst of airports, trade shows, and polished boardrooms, he carried within him the heart of an artist and the conscience of a Limerick rebel.

Marriage brought him to France, where he settled in the port city of Saint-Malo. “After spending half my life in France, I learned to appreciate my Irishness,” he reflects. “I never forgot the Irish language. Living among the Bretons, with their Celtic roots, made it even more important to understand what being Irish truly means.”

His business flourished, later expanding into an online company, but eventually, the call of art — the quieter, riskier path — grew impossible to ignore. “I traded the company car and the airport lounges for a small studio and tubes of paint,” he says. “It was a giant step into an uncertain future — one I have never regretted.”

The birth of the Irish Girl

The story that would become The Irish Girl began, fittingly, as a private letter to the next generation. As his daughters grew, Duhan wanted to give them something that explained their connection to Ireland — something tangible, imaginative, and true. Each Christmas, he wrote and illustrated a few chapters, blending history and legend, faith and family. “I never thought about editing it for the public,” he admits. “But several friends read the early chapters and encouraged me to publish. They saw something universal in Lucy’s story — that sense of belonging and loss that every emigrant knows.”

What began as a father’s gift evolved into a work of historical fiction that resonated with readers in Ireland and abroad. The first volume, The Irish Girl, traced Lucy’s childhood in Askeaton amid the turbulence of Tudor Ireland. It was praised for its vivid sense of place and its graceful prose — qualities that deepen in the sequel.

Faith, exile, and the strength of women

In The Irish Girl II – The Journey to Brittany, Lucy’s world widens. Torn from her homeland, she faces the dangers of sea voyages, foreign courts, and spiritual testing. Beneath the surface adventure lies a meditation on faith — not only religious faith but faith in identity, family, and inner truth. Duhan’s portrayal of Lucy is both tender and quietly radical. “The story explores the endurance of women,” he says. “In that violent and uncertain age, their courage and wisdom often went unrecorded. Lucy is not just a witness to history; she becomes its moral compass.”

The novel’s subtitle, The Journey to Brittany, reflects not only the O’Brien family’s flight but also Duhan’s own life arc — from Limerick to France, from external travel to inner understanding. “It’s about crossing not only oceans but boundaries of self,” he explains. “Every exile carries a mirror. You leave one country only to discover another within yourself.”

A painter of two homelands

Though best known now as a writer, Duhan remains first and foremost an artist. His studio in Brittany overflows with watercolours of Irish boglands, Breton harbours, and windswept headlands. “Painting and writing come from the same place,” he says. “Both are ways of seeing — of finding light within shadow.”

His visual art often accompanies his books. The illustrations in The Irish Girl II are not decorative but expressive — emotional landscapes that echo the story’s rhythm. “Sometimes I paint to understand what I’ve written,” he says with a smile. “Other times I write to explain what I’ve painted.” An Irish Heart in Breton Light

In Saint-Malo, Duhan has found a home that reflects his own divided loyalties: Irish by birth, Breton by adoption, both shaped by the sea. The connection between Ireland and Brittany — two Celtic cultures sharing ancient echoes — runs through his work. “The Bretons understand exile,” he says. “They know what it means to hold on to language, song, and story against the tide. That’s why I feel at home here. It’s as if I found another Ireland, just across the water.”

His days now follow a rhythm of painting, writing, and quiet reflection. He works not for fame but for continuity — to leave behind something honest and enduring. “Art should serve memory,” he says. “It should give voice to those who came before, and offer hope to those who come after.”

Coming home through story

For all his years abroad, Eric Duhan remains profoundly of Limerick. His voice still carries the cadence of the Shannon, his words the humility and humour of his home city. Asked what he misses most, he smiles: “The people. The sense of conversation. In Limerick, every street corner has a story.” That belief in story — in the power of narrative to bridge generations and geographies — lies at the heart of The Irish Girl series. Through Lucy O’Brien’s eyes, readers glimpse not only the struggles of the past but the enduring questions of identity that shape every Irish emigrant’s life.

As The Irish Girl II – The Journey to Brittany reaches new readers, it brings with it more than history or fiction. It brings the spirit of a man who has spent a lifetime navigating between art and survival, Ireland and France, solitude and belonging. In Eric Duhan’s world, every crossing is a return, every exile a rediscovery. His journey — like Lucy’s — reminds us that the truest home may be the one we build through imagination, memory, and faith. “Leaving Ireland taught me what it means to be Irish,” he says softly. “You never stop belonging. You just learn to carry the country inside you.”