New Paintings & Free Shipping

Hope you are all enjoying this beautiful weather.  I’ll be back in the studio soon. I have some commissions to do and will enter some art competitions.

If you feel the calling to purchase one of the paintings please do get in touch free shipping/ delivery on all paintings.

I have been painting my local landscape in East Cork for many years. I decided to visit and walk around Fota House and the formal picturesque gardens. I was enticed to the Lily Pond. Over the course of a week, I returned every day, painting En Plein air. I loved the smells and the textures, even the rain was welcome as it allowed me to be quiet, look and listen.

Fota House has the finest collection of 17^th Century Landscape paintings outside of the National Gallery in Dublin. I was inspired by the classical compositions and limited palettes of William Ashford PRHA, Robert Carver, Jonathan Fisher, and Thomas Roberts. I started my paintings En Plein air in Fota. On returning to the studio, I decided to rely on a limited palette of permanent sap green mixed with black and white to create a tonal painting.

In this painting, I used a tall sweeping tree to frame the composition and attract the viewers’ attention to create a classical look. I introduced light green Indian ink to convey the algae on the lake, I allowed the paint to pool and drip here and leave areas of untouched canvas to remind us that this is a painting. Art is an illusion. Beauty manifests here in the space between order and disorder. The culture of art is a reminder of the illusion of reality in life, and of the other side of it—the reality of illusion in our lives. The perception of beauty, and of the making of it.

The titles are a departure for me also as I have used a visual description of the painting rather than an emotional response to the scene, which is how I normally title my work.

My titles are:

1. “A view of the lily pond at Fota House, Arboretum and Gardens with a tall Scott’s Pine in the background. 60 x 70 cm. Acrylic on canvas.
2. “An idyllic view of the lily pond with foliage”. Tonal painting with Phthalo blue. 26 x 36 cm Acrylic on canvas.
   Here is the setup of me painting en Plein air at Fota House, Arboretum & Gardens Fota Island last summer.  With the two paintings that were on exhibit in the Fota House exhibition. they have both moved on to their new homes.