My painting of Seamus Heaney is more than half completed... I think. I'm trying to finish in time for his visit in April to Villanova University Irish Studies event.
He will be my twelfth Irish Writer painting. The paintings are so large that I've never been able to see them all in the same room. Nine of them, owned by Clifford and Ruth Melberger of Scranton, PA, are currently hanging on a huge brick wall at the Library building at Wyoming Seminary School in Wilkes Barre, PA.
I think maybe I better make the next twelve a little smaller.
January 22, 2010
New and improved I've added Desmond's Quilt to my IRISH QUILTS video and upgraded it to Hi-Def at the same time.
December 27, 2009
The Road to O'Casey
A few weeks ago I finished my 11th Irish Writer painting. And a long, tortured, trail it was. Began it in November of '08 after reading and re-reading O'Casey's Three Dublin Plays, The Shadow of a Gunman, Juno and the Paycock, and The Plough and the Stars. I was fascinated in his portrayal of Dubliners during the Rising of 1916, and his use of language just amazed me.
Here's an example:
FLUTHER: (unable to stand the slight) Fight fair! A few hundred scrawls o' chaps with a couple o' guns an' rosary beads, again' a hundred thousand throned men with horse, fut, an' artillery… an' he wants us to fight fair! (To Sergeant) D'ye want us to come out in our skins an' throw stones!
I finally settled on this passage from The Plough and the Stars for the text to place within the painting:
"You couldn't feel anyway else at a time like this when the spirit of a man is pulsing to be out fighting for th' truth with his feet trembling on the way, maybe to th' gallows, and his ears tingling with the faint, far-away sound of bursting rifle-shots that'll maybe whip th' last little shock of life out of him that's left lingerin' in his body!"(gulp!)
I'm a painter and a photographer... and having our photographic Ireland Calendar dropped by the publisher doesn't keep me from taking a million photos during our almost-annual trips to Ireland. When at home I keep turning out paintings of Ireland, some more traditional, some I call "natural abstracts' which are up close and personal looks at Nature's graphic design.
The stunning bay of Loughros is a few miles west of Ardara in Southwest Donegal. This painting is hanging in the Wayside Pub, a new Irish pub/restaurant in Lake Jackson, TX, on the gulf coast south of Houston.
"Kylemore Abbey"
This view of Kylemore Lough is just east from Kylemore Abbey in Connemara, Co. Galway.
