stone walls Two amazing days on Innishmaan in May of 2012 led to a dozen painting ideas. I thought I had seen stone walls before, but noooooo.
On our walk through the empty village the first afternoon we came across an old woman who was tottering along with a cane and was having difficulty filling a pail of water for her cow; I offered to help and after we had together filled the bucket the old woman thanked me and, as we walked away, called out a blessing to me, twice, in English and again in Irish.
That evening at the hotel pub, I struck up a conversation with
the Innishmaan Postmistress who was seated next to me at the bar. I told
her about the meeting with the old woman and she asked, "What
did she look like?" I described her and she rolled her eyes, "That
was my mother. She didn't need to be watering that cow. My brother takes care of that." Only in Ireland. Innismaan is Ireland in it's purest form.
I decided to put the old woman in a painting and so here she is bringing water, not to her cow, but to this beautiful Connemara Pony.
