These three villages Landimore, Llanrhidian and Llanmadoc, are on the northern side of Gower, away from the busy beaches of Caswell, Three Cliffs Bay, Oxwich and Port Eynon. The “Llan” part of the place names originally refered to an enclosed area of land- usually a church or monastic cell. Landimore is the English version of the placename, in Welsh it is “Llandimore”. I liked the challenge of painting these lesser-known Gower villages (I am sure they are very well-known to the locals) especially the Britannia Inn at Llanmadoc from high up!
Grief has made me stupid. I struggle with new or complicated things. I am really struggling with writing anything longer than a couple of sentences. WordPress keeps changing how it works too.
So I am just going to present you with three paintings of beautiful Donegal I have finished recently. I have a small collection of Gower paintings to come too.
We have now been back in Swansea since the end of January. The move from Derry with three cats and a dog was very tiring indeed!
Until last week’s six days of glorious sunshine, it has rained almost constantly here. This has kept us indoors, reluctantly, and unable to enjoy the Gower Coast, or able to look for inspiration for subject matter for paintings. It has been a pretty depressing to be honest. So with last week’s sun, we spent nearly every day re-aquainting ourselves with this wonderful landscape. By we, I mean my husband, myself and our dog, Effie the collie, who absolutely loved running herself into the ground, or sand, in the beautiful beaches of Three Cliffs Bay, Tor Bay, Mewslade Bay and Rhossili Bay. My husband, Seamus, also managed to fit in the Knave, a gorgeous area between Mewslade and Port Eynon.
The Knave
I have been using my Canon camera but my husband has also been experimenting with compositions photographed by drone. We have (had – one was lost near Mewslade) two DJI Mini 2 drones which are fairly basic compared to some but which are quality enough to take drone photography good enough to paint from, which is really the whole point.
We initially used drone photography partly as a response to living in Ireland, especially the Republic of Ireland, where some beautiful landscape was sometimes inaccessible or on private land so we would have fly above it to get a good view of it.
We also found that the drone did not have to be that high off the ground to be produce interesting shots. Compositions seemed to improve from only 10 or 20 foot in the air. We rarely go too far above the landscape feature we are trying to photograph.
Coming back to Swansea and intending to repaint “old ground”, so to speak, it is important for me to keep things fresh, otherwise my work can become laboured or even slightly bored painting the same subject matter in the same way as before. So drone photography helps freshen up the process. It also helps one to re-imagine compositions in terms of landscape painting.
It has helped me see composition in a new way and it has also helped us to become more aware of how various bits of Gower landscape “fit ” together.
There are no longer isolated, and seemingly unconnected, areas anymore.
For example, the photo above shows the Worms Head area with Fall and Mewslade bays behind and the Knave beyond that. The various areas of landscape now form a more coherent whole. I will give some examples below of the images we have been capturing down in Three Cliffs Bay and Tor Bay and how they have resulted in a couple of paintings.
Three Cliffs
Droning is also good fun, flying around the countryside having a bird’s eye view of the landscape is strangely liberating and, at times, exhilarating – so says Seamus (I find it quite alarming at times, I dont have his nerves of steel).
Effie, our dog, had her first excursion down Three Cliffs which saw us walk down the rocky paths and great sandy swathes from Penmaen car park to Three Cliffs Bay.
How great it was to see those monumental stacks again, like seeing an old friend, rising impossibly from the sandy ground. Effie was pretty good with the other dogs on the beach who were trying to join in with her ball chasing fun. Fortunately she is ball-chasing obsessed and as long as she has a job to do, some work, she is fairly singleminded and behaves well.
This was a relief, as we were worried it might take some adjustment for her as her previous experience of beaches were 2-mile empty beaches in Inishowen and in West Donegal where she rarely came across other dogs. Also, Donegal people are often so polite that they leave the beach when you arrive and let you have free run of it to yourself. It is great having a beach to yourself, a real treat and luxury!
Great Tor, GowerEffie at Three Cliffs, Gower (I have the ball)
In Gower, even in early Spring, there are numerous other dogs to contend with, but most are just out having a great time like Effie, so are generally not much trouble. It has been great seeing Effie have so much fun, she loves running on the beach.
Effie on Rhossili Beach with Worms Head behind (again I have the ball and her attention!)
My husband droned Three Cliffs the week before when the tide was in. It was out when we were there.
Three Cliffs, Gower
My first drone photography inspired paintings were both of Great Tor and I am presently working on my first Three Cliffs paintings since I have returned.
I have been working on commissions in the last few weeks.
Although this is of the same Tor it looks very different. Drone photography allows you to explore different aspects of the same subject matter. It allows you to see things differently from different heights and angles. Much like a person’s face can appear different from different profiles. This keeps the creative juices flowing as it is possible to re-imagine similiar subject matter in so many more ways.
Plus all these aspects can combine with photographying at different times of the year with different light. For example as the days draw longer, it will be possible to drone on the other side of Great Tor, a side usually in dark shade at present. Longer Summer days will provide new aspects and new compositions.
The possibilties for composition are greatly increased with droning. For example, the colours in this second painting seem warmer as the drone is lower and reflects the sandy orange rather than in Great Tor #1 where the drone is higher and is reflecting the sky and the painting is more imbued with blue-tinged light. It took a while to realise how the height of the drone greatly influences colour. This is an area which I find very interesting. With a camera, light and colour is relatively more stable and predictable. With a drone so many more variables around light, colour and composition come into play.
So that is it for now. I will blog again soon and hope to blog more frequently in future.
Just to let you know that I have extended my winter sale to 10th January – Join my mailing list and and get a code which allows 30% off the listed price! What a great way to start 2026!!
Worms Head (Rhossili) on Gower Peninsula by Emma Cownie
Clouds over Bannau Brycheinion (Brecon Beacons)
Summer in Mid Wales
Midsummer at Malin Head, Donegal- Emma Cownie
Marsh at Pennard Pill (Three Cliffs Bay, Gower) painting by Emma Cownie
Fishing Boat at Port Donegal-Emma Cownie
Lighting the way to Arranmore
John's Cottage, Malin Head, Donegal_Emma Cownie
Pen Y Fan from Usk Valley (Bannau Brycheiniog)
Tenby Terraces - painting by Emma Cownie
Stooknanillar, Inishowen (Donegal)-Emma Cownie
Wild Birds Video
It was freezing cold but the birds were very busy. There is a sign near by asking people not to feed the birds but the locals take no notice (note the bird feeder). I am glad because I loved watching the birds, especially the tiny coaltits. My camera work isn’t much good but at least you know its real and AI generated slop.
Today is the shortest day of the year. Its very dark up north here. The morning are very dark yet I find it hard to sleep. When the sun appears it illuminates and reveals a verdent but slummering landscape. I am always looking for flashes of red to paint in the deepest winter. In the past it might be a coat, or a door. Today it is a red roof on an old stone cottage. The old houses are disappearing fast here.
This part of Inishowen near Dunaff feels remote. Maybe that’s because we drove through up and through the Urris Hills and Mamore gap to get here. It’s all small long roads like this one. Its tucked away in a north western corner of Inishowen, Malin Head is to the north, close by. I look forward to the days slowing getting longer.
I have tried several times this year to write more about developments in AI (and Art) but I keep giving up because I keep getting sucked down “rabbit holes” and I find it hard to see the wood for the trees. OK here goes – I dislike and distrust AI. It’s overhyped. The visual stuff looks horrible. It’s dangerous. Unregulated it is going to cause a lot of damage in our societies/brains/education/communities/environment. I think that is the nub of it. We are told that our glorious AI-powered future is imminent, yet what we’ve actually got is unprofitable, unsustainable generative AI that has an unassailable problem of spitting out incorrect information. Its an expensive dead end.
If you would like to read a more articulate assessment of the current state of (digital) economy I can recommend Ed Zitron article on the Rot Economy – its in a slightly different league to the Cory Doctorow’s Enshitification explanation of why platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Youtube used to be good to use but are now annoying and almost impossible to use. Can you find the video you just watched on Youtube? Me neither. I have struggled with WordPress ever since it “updated” itself to include all sorts of AI features I will never use. My Windows 11 PC isnt much better. It forever flips a “news” screen in front on my eyes in the midst of me doing something else, like typing a blog
Ed says “Things are being made linearly worse in the pursuit of growth in every aspect of our digital lives, and it’s because everything must grow, at all costs, at all times, unrelentingly … Our digital lives are actively abusive and hostile, riddled with subtle and overt cons. Our apps are ever-changing, adapting not to our needs or conditions, but to the demands of investors and internal stakeholders that have reduced who we are and what we do to an ever-growing selection of manipulatable metrics.” I was delighted (and not surprised) that 95% per cent of the more than 10,000 people in the UK who had their say over how music, novels, films and other works should be protected from copyright infringements by tech companies called for copyright to be strengthened and a requirement for licensing in all cases or no change to copyright law. AI companies have no right to our work.
I have decided to give up on writing about AI and so instead I will you with the best commentry on this current state of madness I have come across: AI Peas by Stephen Collins.
Dun Fhraoigh in Irish means, “Fort of the Heather” – it has been a fort at Dunree for thousands of years, since the Bronze age (over 4000 years ago). When you see the chunk of rock that the “modern” day fort (well Napoleonic era) for has been built on, you understand why.
Its a big chunk of rock! (photo credit: Emma Cownie)
Photo Credi t: The Artillery Club of Ireland
Aeriel View of Dunree Head (Google Maps)
Its location, on the cliffs of Dunree Head, is great for observing and controlling ships moving up and down the majestic Lough Swilly, one of Ireland’s three glacial fjords.
The English built this sturdy fort on the chunk of rock c. 1812-3 with a draw-bridge! The enemy back then, as readers of Jane Austen will know, was the French forces of Napolean Bonaparte. (The story of Jane Austen’s Donegal nieces is worthy of a BBC/RTE mini-series in its own right; linking Kent, Ramelton and Gweedore). The French had attempted landing in Lough Swilly in 1798 with a force of about 8,000 men, which was repelled at sea. The Royal Navy anchored ships in the Lough. There were a lot of big guns here, nine 24-pounders were in 1817. There was once a Martello-type in the centre of the old fort but it was demolished c. 1900, as it obstructed the field of fire from the new fort on the summit of Dunree Hill.
Although the Irish Free State was created in 1922 and they followed (and still follow) a policy of political neutrality, the British army did not leave Dunree until 1938. This was because Lough Swilly was a “Treaty Port”, and it remained under British military control for defensive purposes. During the Second World War, it was under control of the Irish Army and it played an integral role in safeguarding Ireland when a number of anti aircraft guns were added to site. The waters off the coast of Donegal are under threat today from Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet”.
I am not particularly interested in military hardware, although I know plenty of people in the world are. I have not been in the military museum. What did take my interest, however, were the barracks. There were brick buildings but also a lot of decaying iron huts that the gunners had lived in. I am nosy and I enjoy seeing how people lived. Although, frustratingly, most of that has gone. There tiny glimpses; brick chimney stacks, the odd rusting bedstead but not a lot.
Army Barracks – Brick and iron. Photo Credit: James Henry Johnston
A little further up (a steep) hill from Fort Dunree and the barrack buildings is Dunree Lighthouse. This a puzzling lighthouse. I am used to lighthouses being built atop of great pillars like the one across the Swilly water at Fanad.
The one at Dunree, however, has no tower. It doesnt need one. The light is at ground level. The “ground” however its up high on the cliff way above the Fort. A lantern attached to a house for the Lighthouse Keeper was built, and the light established on 15th January 1876. The light was a non flashing one with a two wick oil burner. Sadly, for the lighthouse keeper, technology did away with his job in 1927 when this light was replaced in December 1927 with an “unwatched acetylene with a carbide generating plant attached to the station”. The light was later converted to electricity in 1969. It must have been a great place to live.
The lighthouse keeper’s house has a spectacular view across the Lough. Its built of local rubble stone masonry, this building retains its early form and character. Its visual appeal and expression is enhanced by the retention of much of its original fabric including timber sliding sash windows. Both the house and the lantern were built by McClelland & Co. of Derry. The simple outbuilding and boundary walls are very elegant too.
The views at Dunree are spectacular. Lough Swilly is quite majestic, even on an overcast day. Perhaps, it’s particularly dramatic on a overcast day with the shifting light and colours. You can walk up Dunree Hill and look over towards the Urris Hills and Dunree Bay (Crummies Bay).
There is a regular bus service from Buncrana, a coffee house, museum and public toilet. It might be a good idea to go before they start work on revamping the place!
When I was a Secondary School teacher (please note this was a decade ago ) I used to want “easy” classes. You know, classes where the pupils were polite and enthusiastic. They did exist; classes where they’d put their hands up and waited to be called upon to make their interesting point. However, there would […]
It’s time to end this abusive relationship. Meta, who own Facebook and Instagram, has recently “announced” a change to their Terms of Service for business & creator pages from 30th October. It was a very quiet annoucement and lots of pepople missed it. In fact they tried to sneak it past us. There was no email notification, no pop-up warning, no signature to consent. It will just happen. You agree to them automatically by continuing to use the platform.
