Monday, February 25, 2008

A Painting for St. Patricks Day.


Here is a small study/oil painting sketch of Croagh Patrick in Mayo.


I am selling it as a special for St. Patricks day.


I am only charging $300 for it.


It is an Oil on canvas, 18 inches by 14 inches and I normally would charge about $650-$750 for it direct from my studio. Allow about 10 days for shipping to the US.


Click on the painting for a larger photo.

with Paypal, secure online payments







Friday, February 22, 2008

More lino-cut prints

I have been working on my prints for the Ex Libris exhibition in Belgrade. The theme is to be Lighthouse. I have two works at the moment one based on a wood cut I did earlier with an ogham stone, Newgrange monument and the salmon of Knowledge. The woodcut is too big for the exhibition, it is 12 by 10 inches, but I need them to be 15 by 10 cm, 6 by 4 inches max.

I have redone the block as a linocut, the print I have is not quite right yet. I need to reprint it on a different paper, the other paper I used has too much texture.
I also did a linocut of a lighthouse but I am not really very happy with it. It is too simple and dark.

















Monday, February 18, 2008

I am back from my trip to the west. I have not been into the studio yet though as I have been sorting out the garden in the sunshine while we have it. I have rebuilt my stream coming into the pond, moving it from left to right away from the access point to my studio. Now it is working away, just needing the final stonework/rockery to be finished, but I can do that at leisure. Next job on the agenda is the steps up to the boat-dock and window boxes on the studio itself.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008


I have everything organised for tommorrow, flowers,card, dinner reservation.......it is Valentines Day.....
.........and I am dissapearing at 5 am the following morning, off to the West and fishing on Lough Corrib. She's not a bad wife at all.... Sometimes one has to make sacrifices, it would be a bit much to head down the day before!. I can only go for the one day also as I have to be in Dublin for an important meeting on Saturday.
Apart from that I still have to organise my fishing gear, most of the trout gear is still put away for the winter, and our trip to Amsterdam has meant that time has caught up on me. I will be busy tommorrow afternoon getting the Van loaded and ready for my trip. I need to get all my gear ready and checked in daylight.

Monday, February 11, 2008

Sunlight, water and brightness

I have been busy working in my studio again, but the last two days have been quite warm (about 15 degrees centigrade) and sunny, so I have had the door open and I have worked to the sound of running water in my Pond. The sunlight reflecting in through the windows and the door off the water surface fills the studio with light. Added to the fact that the studio was a gift, it is really a joy working in there. The difference in the atmosphere between it and my old studio in Marlay Park is emmense. I was painting away, the work was progressing well, and I had stepped back to view the painting and I glanced to the right, the light reflecting up from the surface of the pond catching my eye, and I thought to myself, this feels good.

I am working in a beautiful environment, in a studio that was given with kind regards....it has only pleasant feelings. In short it is a nurturing environment for creativity. It was something I was missing for a long time in the Marlay studio. I am looking forward to getting stuck in to a series of work this summer. I hope we get a bit more sunshine than last year though.

Friday, February 8, 2008

I'm back from Amsterdam.

I am just back from Amsterdam. I enjoyed the trip, and the Van Gogh museum, but I found many of the other visitors to the museum were quite rude, standing in front of you while you are looking at works or pushing ahead when there are queues. People can be very inconsiderate at times, but more so when they are abroad. It seems to be all nationalities too. I will go back again though. I did not go to the Reichsmuseum to see the works there as I had promised Christine a shopping trip to spend some of my recent earnings, which she managed to do of course :).
and she saved me over a hundred euro on a pair of boots, they were 30% off.....LOL. We travelled through every shoe shop in Amsterdam, some twice. At least it was only shoes she was buying, we did not have room for a lot of clothing in the bags as we only took carry on luggage, just enough for the 3 days, and she didn't see the Diamond she wanted, just as well.:).

We did a lot of walking and took a couple of boat trips around the canals.




The amount of houses leaning one way or another is amazing. Because the houses suffer from subsidence (built on wooden pilings in the sand in the 1600's) they are often held up by the neighbouring houses leaning into each other. Many roads are made up of higgledy-piggeldy house fronts, leaning forwards, backwards, to one side or the other or even all directions at once!.
It is definitely not a city for a perfectionist......or a structural survey engineer....

We had to take a walk through the red-light district while we were there, but it was a bit of a misnomer as a 'sex shop', you would see more flesh on the beach than was on view through the windows.

The seediness doesn't really show during the daytime, which is when we wandered through, more or less just to 'see it'. Our Hotel was well away from the area, although only 5-10 minutes away by tram, as we booked a hotel on hoofstratt, around the corner from the museums (2 minute walk). Even so we walked into the city center in a couple of hours....there are a lot of shoe shops on the way.... hence the difference between the tram time..... we also walked around looking at the sites and along the canals, the weather was quite pleasant.



Amsterdam does look very grey though, it may be brighter in summer, but I could see why Vincent Van gogh's colours were so dark and brown in his early works before he moved south. I would definitely reccommend the trip as a long weekend, mid-week break, but I would not suggest you try to get all the sights/museums in at once. Prices are comparable with Dublin eating out and drinking in Pubs in the main, but the flowers are a lot cheaper.