Kristina O'Toole's birthday cake. She told me it was inspired by one of my Irish Quilt prints.  It's the best St. Paddy's Day cake I've seen. 

Loughros Beg - My newest painting.  It's big (42" wide) and represents my cautious tip-toeing into landscape painting, although I want my landscapes to be more powerful and graphic than soothing.  This incredible mountain sat across the tidal bay from our fabulous rental cottage in southwest Donegal, just west of Ardara out the Loughros Point pennisula.   The most gorgeous scenery imaginable out the picture windows. It was November and the green hills were streaked with orange. Our closest neighbor across the road, a piebald pony we named Sinead, appeared to enjoy the view herself.

No, I didn't paint this.  But I wish I had.  "Winter Light Achill" is by a talented painter I've been in touch with, Douglas Hutton. He's from County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland, also known as "the Maguire County." 

    Apparently he spends his life tramping all over the west of Ireland which is something I can only accomplish every year and a half or so. 

   On his website is a self-portrait depicting him rowing in the ocean.  That separates us right there.  The closest thing I've done to that is dunking--and killing--my camera in Echo Lake when my canoe tipped over in 8" of water. (A year later I did it again!)

   Check out his website:  http://www.douglashuttonartist.co.uk/Home.aspx 

Edith Kudlovic is a very talented painter and photographer from Austria.  She, like me, has been "hijacked by Ireland" and she found me on the web.  She sent me these photos of a hand-knitted blanket of the fields of Ireland she is working on, "with yellow broom, pink and lila Heather, darkbrown peat and grey stonewalls, blue coasts and ochre grounds, only for me, to remember Ireland."

     I think it is just wonderful, a real work of art, and I wanted to share the pictures with whomever I can. Edith's website is http://edith-kudlovic.at/

Draiocht Na Mara  In the Irish language the name means, "Magic of the Sea" Or as I would put it, "Show me the Fish!"  This trawler is tied up in Dingle Harbor, reportedly to be auctioned off to pay harbor fees.  Battered and rusted, slathered with multiple layers of paint, it was the yellow that attracted me. I've only done one other painting that featured yellow.
    I really struggled with this one, and it's been painted and re-painted and darkened and lightened and darkened again many times.  I also managed to get fresh cadmium orange oil paint on two pairs of pants and one sofa arm as I carried it around, still wet, placing it in different locations to attempt to get a read on whether it was too yellow or not yellow enough or too pale or too contrasty.  Finally, enough!  As my old friend Steve Jackson told me, "A work of art is never finished, it is merely abandoned." 

The Yeoman Duntrup - This painting has been sort of a surprise to me. I used as research some photos my daughter Cindy took last summer of a big red freighter being overhauled in the harbor of Ijmoiden in Holland. The ship had suffered a violent explosion and fire several months earlier while berthed in Lough Linnhe, on the west coast of Scotland, and had been towed to Ijmoiden for repairs. The images Cindy captured were just stunning. I decided to go close in, so close that the painting would become as abstract as it was detailed.

Ballyclare #2 - Finally finished my second painting from the May 2009 Ballyclare Horse Fair. About 30 minutes north of Belfast, the fair has been held every year since 1746!
Get a closer look on my website.

Update: We're building a painting studio at our lake house on Echo Lake, just north of Binghamton in upstate New York. Going up tomorrow to see how work is proceeding. Here're a couple photos from last week.

Just back from my 50th Reunion at Notre Dame... so you'll have to forgive me...

Seamus is finally finished

Ready or not, the Seamus Heaney painting is finished. In time to have it on display at Villanova University on April 20 when the Irish Studies Department present an Evening with Peter Fallon and Seamus Heaney.

There are lines from eight poems in the painting. You can look closer, and read all the poems, on my website.