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.

Seamus Heaney, in progress...

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.

New and improved
I've added Desmond's Quilt to my IRISH QUILTS video and upgraded it to Hi-Def at the same time.

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!)


Some steps (and false starts) along the way...