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!
Here is the painting that finished me off. Now I look at it after a month, I am not sure why. I just felt like I had run into the sand and needed a change. I had been doing a lot of reading about composition but I suspect it had more to do with taking too long to paint. Acrylic paint often requires several layers to achieve the opacity of oil paint. I was getting bored and tired and I wanted to try something new. A change is a good as a rest.
Toralaydan Island, West Donegal
So I took a month off posting new work on facebook & instagram, to give myself head space. Some artists love being filmed live and showing their “process” – I am not like that. I get very self conscious and often will immediately screw up a painting if I take photos too early in its development. It’s one of the reasons I cannot bear to paint outside “en plein air” – people understandably want to see what you are painting and that makes me feel very self-conscious. I really dont know how people go on TV shows like “Landscape Artist of the Year” and produce really good paintings, or half-way decent paintings at all, in fact. They must have nerves of steel. I don’t. In fact, I know that many of my paintings can go through stages of looking quite rubbish before they (almost always) emerge butterfly-like from the murk and layers. It’s a lovely (and sadly rare) experience when a painting look interesting/beautiful all they way through the process of coming into being.
I had bought some tubes of Acrylic Gouache in the spring but had not got around to trying them out. Now I opened that box of paints and gave them my full attention. I had been looking for a water-based paint, to reduce the risk to my pets, especially my young inqusitive cats. I had had oil paint/white-spirit incidents with pets in the past when we had a lot more space and I did not want to take that risk now. I also wanted opaque paint. I had discovered that some American artists, whose work I liked, used Nova acrylics which is pretty opaque but they did not have a UK stockist. I was cautious about importing paints from the US as I once ordered a load of paint from a sale from JerrysArtsarama only to get stung by customs and VAT charges. So any saving I had made in the sale were wiped out! I also considered Golden SO FLAT matte acrylic paint but I am not a great fan of Golden colours. Dont get me wrong, some of their acrylic colours are great (light ultramarine for example) and I know many artists rave about them, but I don’t LOVE them. They were also sold in a jar rather than a tube, and I could just see me absent-mindedly sticking my dirty paint brush in a jar and mucking up the colour. I prefer tubes that I can squeeze a tiny bit of paint out onto my wet palette and keep my colours clean.
Not the set I bought – I wish!
I saw that Jacksons Art stocked Turner Acryl from Japan. I watched a couple of videos comparing different makes of Acrylic Gouache and liked the vibrancy of Turner’s paint. There is not a lot of information about acrylic gouache, unlike regular acrylic (I have several books on the technical aspects of using this acrylic). I keep reading the same thing – its a cross between gouache and acrylic. Gouache is a water-based paint which can be opaque (unlike water colours which are usually transculent) and it can be reactivated with water. Acrylic gouache, however, once dry, sets like acrylic and cannot be reactivated with water. It dries pretty quickly too. It dries to a smooth velvety matt finish too. It is used by illustrators, especially anime.
An example of anime art from Instagram from @happy.artistry
Look at the lovely rich colours!
The colours are lovely but I have a lot to learn. There are so many wonderful rich colours and I can see why these [paints are popular with illustrators. Unlike acrylics or gouache, there is little to no colour shift. It is non-toxic. It does not dry lighter or darker. I am finding this hard to get used too. I am overcautious about laying down darker colours. I have to learn this again and again. I often dont make my paintings dark enough as I am afraid the strong colour of the tarmac road will overwelm the painting. I have to repaint the shadows.
I feel out of control with it at times. Sometimes that is exciting, others just scary.
Winter Morning on Academy Road, Derry – Acrylic Gouache on wood Panel 2024 – An early effort
I painted a load of duff pieces before I started to feel I was getting somewhere with “Ardara”.
Ardara – Acrylic Gouache on Wood Panel 2024 – Another early effort
I felt that a new medium required new subject matter to set it apart from the rural scenes I had focused on since moving to Ireland in 2021. My work had previously described by Niall McMonagle in the Irish Independent as a “Clear bright glimpse of a vanishing Ireland”. I wanted to mix things up and paint a more contemporary version of everyday Irish life.
This meant scenes with cars. The Irish love their cars. I have painted cars in the past but not for a very long time. It was usually at night or in the rain (at night) so you could not really see them properly.
My Pop Art – The Driving Rain (SOLD) Oil on Linen Canvas, 2015
Coming out of Shell, Oil on Linen canvas (SOLD) 2020
It was in 2017 that I decided to pursue “Urban Minimalism” for my “Hollowed community” project for the MadeinRoath festival in Cardiff. For a long time, I have sought out empty scenes with no cars or people. It found it cleansing. The Morris Minor (below) was one of few exception to this. This vintage car was parked around the corner from our home in Brynmill. I used to hear the owner drive past our house on the way to the paper shop every morning.
Urban Minimal style – Morris Minor 2018 Oil on Linen Canvas (SOLD)
Now I decided on a volte face and to seek out street scenes with cars to challenge myself. Car are difficult to paint. I know some people will disagree with me, but in themsleves, they are not intrinsically beautiful, although the light reflected on their surfaces can be. I am more a fan of vintage cars like the Morris Minor and old-style minis (genuinely small cars) and enjoy the colours used by Italian manufacturers such as Fiat 500s. Too many cars in Ireland are black or grey. They don’t make for interesting compositions. Surprisingly, Lorries do. In the right place.
Deliveries on Queen Street, Derry – Acrylic Gouache on wood panel 2024
I wanted to paint with speed. I was bored of spending days or even weeks on a large painting. I wanted to work fast keep things fresh. I tried hard to resist overpainting. I left wobbly lines where possible so as to convey some of the energy of the urban areas.
Derry is a very lively city. I also wanted to explore town/city life on both sides of the border in Donegal and Derry, in Northern Ireland. The building stock is very different depending on which side of the border you are. The number plates maybe different but the cars are pretty similar.
Bogside, Derry – Acrylic Gouache on wood panel 2024
Light and shadows continue to be a theme in my work.
Carn (Donegal) – Acrylic Gouache on wood panel 2024
I have found this both challenging and exciting. I have produced quite a few paintings that didn’t work, especially at the start but I just pushed on. I knew that there would be a lot of wastage at the start. The only way I would get the hang of this medium was by painting a lot. I learn through my hands, mixing the paint and then placing the paint on the board. I have not yet achieved the consistency in my work I am used to with oils and acrylics.
I also had to deal with the fear that people might not like this style of paintings or the subject matter. That’s why I had to stay off social media until I felt like I knew what I was doing (sort of). I have shifted styles and subject matter before. There are themes I have focused on before and I am revisiting them. Others are constant – shadow and light. Strong dynamic compositions are also important.
I used to alternate larger landscapes with smaller people/animal paintings. This way I kept my interest in what I was painting. But I seem to get stuck painting landscapes when I came to Ireland. I am not sure it was good for me as an artist. I need to mix things up to keep them fresh. I don’t know where I am going with this but I feel I need to persue this trail for a while longer. I just have to keep going to see where I end up.
I am delighted that Peter Zantingh, a Dutch blogger, wrote this an account of Gola and my work. I have translated it for you to read (well, Google did). You can read the original here.
“In the autumn of 2018, Emma Cownie looked out from the Irish mainland at an island she could not get to. It seemed so close. She could see the rocks off the coast and beyond them, scattered seemingly at random across the rolling land, the whitewashed cottages. Some were abandoned, others clearly still inhabited, or used as summer homes.
Gola Island is one of 365 islands off the Irish coast. It is just two square kilometres in size. No one knows exactly how many people live there, because there are more in the summer than in the winter. Ferryman Sabba only goes up and down between June and September.
But in 2022, there were fifteen people living on Gola, according to official figures.
Emma Cownie is a British artist. She studied medieval history at Cardiff University and taught at a secondary school for a while. On 29 February 2012, she was hit by a car. It was, in retrospect, what prompted her to take up painting full-time. The days in front of the class were exhausting, almost all contact with other people in fact, she was startled by every sudden sound. A few years before the accident her dog had been run over on a busy road.
Painting helped.
In the days after she had stood on the mainland looking at those houses in the distance she painted Spring Light on Gola. It came, she told me, ‘out of a kind of longing for the island’.
In the spring she went again. It was early April, sunny but chilly, a cold wind blowing along the coast. Her husband Séamas was with her, their dog Mitzy too. To get the best view of the island – again there was no ferry – they walked along long stretches of beach and climbed on granite boulders, almost pink in the spring light. From here she could see the houses that had recently been renovated and modernised.
That summer she was finally able to go there. ‘There are hardly any cars’, she told me about it. ‘Just a few tractors, no telephone poles or electricity pylons and only a few other people. Other than that, just birdsong and wind. It’s bliss.’
Spring Light on Gola (Sold)
*I emailed Emma Cownie last month with a simple question. One of her paintings was used on the cover of one of my favorite books, Foster by Claire Keegan. I wanted to discuss that book in my newsletter, and I would like to show that painting as well. Would that be okay? I would mention her name and link to her website.
She responded the same day, and we got to talking. She said that the painting I had asked about was called Traditional Two Storey House, Gola, and that it was nice to hear from someone from the Netherlands, because although she regularly sees Dutch campers in Donegal, the county in the northwest of Ireland where she lives part of the time, she has never sold work to anyone from the Netherlands.
The title of the painting made me curious. Gola? What was that? That’s how I became fascinated with the island in my own way.
At one time, there were about two hundred people living there, who made a living from fishing and small farms. But after 1930, the population began to decline. Especially in the winter, it was easier to earn money in the cities, especially those of Scotland and England, and fewer and fewer people returned for the summers. In 1966, the island’s school closed; with only nine pupils (there used to be sixty), it no longer had a right to exist. The few families with young children were forced to move to the mainland – and once the last family with children had left, the community was doomed.
I read this last in Gola: The Life and Last Days of an Island Community (1969) by F.H. Aalen and H. Brody, which I ordered for a few euros on boekwinkeltjes.nl or Abebooks. I think I mainly wanted to know what happened when the last ones left. How does a group of people dissolve itself?
Brody, a sociologist who wrote the part about the last days of the community by the two authors, saw a kind of laconic group feeling among those who were still there at the end of the sixties. Everyone wanted to stay, if the rest stayed too. Everyone thought it was okay to go, as long as everyone else went too.
The most intriguing aspect of each islander’s account of his own predicament is his insistence that it all depends on the others. […] The general attitude is one of wait and see – what the others do. But all of the Gola people are waiting on one another in this way, and do not seem to mind the impasse that this conditional planning involves. Of ten islanders who related their plans, nine said they would like to stay, but it depended on the others. One man said he would stay so long as he had a dog with him, and could not see any advantage to life away from the island. Apart from that one man, all stated they would be glad to remain on Gola, but did not really mind leaving.
The authors also contributed to a short documentary for the Irish public broadcaster RTÉ from the same year, which shows how one family, the O’Donnells, leaves the island. They lock the door and walk with their dog, a long-haired collie, to a motor boat in the harbor. They are all wearing black. (Screenshots from the film below)
Five people remained: fisherman Eddie, fisherman Tadhg, postman Nora and her husband John, and ninety-year-old Mary. It would not be long for them either.
What was left behind? The island had no shop, no pub, not even a church. “The islanders worship on the mainland when the weather is good enough to make a safe crossing,” Brody wrote in 1969. Just over thirty houses remained, most in poor condition. The schoolhouse and the post office. Wooden boxes and fishing nets in the harbour, where a statue of the Virgin Mary, housed in a stone shrine, continued to look out. Two pegs on a washing line.
Between 1969 and 2002, Gola was an uninhabited island. In Dances With Waves: around Ireland by Kajak (1998), Brian Wilson (not the Beach Boys guy, another Brian Wilson) writes about the time he went ashore during his nearly two-thousand-mile kayak trip all the way around Ireland. He hoped to find some peace and shelter that day, but he encountered “the eerie atmosphere of a ghost town”. Fishing boats lay rotting in the harbour among the washed-up debris.
But he found something more hopeful in the cottages. They were “abandoned, but not in decay”.
[…] one felt as though, like faithful dogs, they were just waiting for their owners to return. More than that, it was as if the island itself was still waiting. And the people came again. They came back. Somewhere around the turn of the millennium, the first ones crossed. Today, most of the cottages are still uninhabited, but in summer the sounds and movements of people join those of the cormorants, guillemots and gannets.
Emma Cownie has made more than 25 paintings of Gola in recent years.
For Traditional Two-storey House, Gola, the painting that made me contact her, she returned to the ‘rules’ she had set for herself a few years earlier. These rules – not coincidentally – coincide with how she wanted to organise her life after the car accident and the difficult time that followed: no cars, no people, bright light.
Furthermore, there must be shadows, preferably diagonal, in simple shapes. The painting must be about the interplay between shadows and man-made constructions, the tension between 3D buildings and 2D shadows.
She also wanted to think longer and better about colour. Not to choose the brightest colour, purely for effect, as she had done before, but to work more subtly. In a new series of works based on the houses on Gola Island, including Traditional Two-storey House, she resisted the urge to make the shadows very dark, the sky pale pink and the grass yellow and bright green. “I tried to keep the shapes and colours as simple as possible without it being a cartoon,” she told me. “I wanted to capture the essence of the place.”
The Traditional House, (Gola)
She painted the picture in January 2021, during a Covid-19 lockdown in Wales, where she was then living. That summer, she and Séamas moved to Donegal, in the north of Ireland.
It was the following summer, 2022, that she was approached by the prestigious London publishers Faber & Faber: they wanted to use Traditional Two-storey House for the cover of Claire Keegan’s Foster, originally published in 2010. “I didn’t realise what an honour it was until I got a copy of the book and read it,” she said. “I cried at the end.”
Foster by Claire Keegan, Published by Faber
Is there a writing lesson in this? I don’t know. Maybe that there’s more to everything. Maybe it’s worth following your interests and fascinations without reservation. To notice it – this interests me, this grabs me – and follow that line, see where it takes you.
Fanad is a finger of land that lies between Lough Swilly and Mulroy Bay on the north coast of County Donegal, Ireland. It is not that easy to get to and the the survival of the Irish language is testiment that relative isolation.
Lambing season at Fanad Head (Donegal) SOLD
Fanad Lighhouse (Donegal). Is one of the 12 Great lighthouses of Ireland. It was built in 1886 at Fanad Head (although the station was originally established in 1817). The lighthouse, or more acrrately, the harbour light, marks the entrance into Lough Swilly which forms a natural harbour.
Fanad Lighthouse (Donegal) SOLD
I have painted this isolated structure several times before. I have always enjoyed painting the northernly light on Fanad. I have only have painted it in acrylics. That’s not a delibertae choice, more one of circumstance because at times I have had limited space, and I dont want to use oil paints with kittens close at hand.
Over to Fanad Lighthouse (Donegal) _Emma Cownie SOLD
I think acrylics suit the airiness of the subject matter. After a couple of years working out how to use them, I have settled on a technique of light layers of paint that allow the underlying colour to show through. This can give a transulent quality to the colour. This is in contrast to the relatively flat areas of colous I use for the larger areas of colour such as sky or the sea.
My latest painting was an experiment in composition. We used an image from a drone shot done by my artist husband, Seamas (James Henry Johnson).
In this piece, I wanted to create a sense of space from the mountains of the Inishowen Peninsula in the distance. The distant mountains were layered with bluish white until I got the right impression of distance.
I often find myself looking at the tiny Fanad lighthouse far off in the distance when I am at Lisfannon on the Inishowen Penisula. There is a sign comemorating a famous Atlantic storm that happened in 1748. this storm threatened to sink The Greyhound, the ship of one John Newton, a slave trader. John was so frightened that he called out to God for mercy. This moment marked a profound spiritual conversion, and many years later he wrote the words for the hymn “Amazing Grace” one of my favourite hymns, and to also campaign for the abolition of slavery.
There is some confusion how many storms there were . One website claims the terrible tempset happened far away out in the Atlantic because it took John Newton another four weeks after his conversion to sail into Lough Swilly and arrive at Derry/Londonderry. The Amazing Grace.ie site however, makes it clear a second storm happened in Lough swilly itself as it quotes John’s journal ” We saw the island of Tory and the next day anchored in Lough Swilly in Ireland. This was the 8th day of April, just four weeks after the damage we sustained from the sea. When we came into this port, our very last victuals was boiling in the pot; and before we had been there two hours, the wind began to blow with great violence. If we had continued at sea that night in our shattered condition, we must have gone to the bottom. About this time I began to know that there is a God that hears and answers prayer.” It’s got to be said, that John Newton really took his time putting his evangelical beliefs into action because he went back to being a slave trader for another five years before he eventually retired and became a minister in 1757!
The heaving sea at the foot of the massive lighthouse rock intrigued me. The Atlantic Ocean has such a bulk and stregth, even on a relatively fine day, I am not surprised that John Newton was terrified by its strength far away from the Donegal coast. I wondered about the long and difficult process of building this structure all those years ago in a remote location. Yet, this lighthouse has stood the test of time and proudly marks the entrance to Lough Swilly and can be seen from inland and further along the coast.
Looking through my recent work, I was surpised to realise that I haven’t painted many paintings of Arranmore Island in the last couple of years despite visiting the islands in the summer. So I have put that right with a series of new paintings.
As always I am entranced by the journey to and from the island. You can read my short History of the Island here
Arranmore is lucky to be served by two ferry companies. There is The Arranmore Ferry (Blue) which is based on the island and Arranmore Ferry (Red) which is not. Yes, I know the names are almost identical, just a small matter of “The”. They both offer a fantastic 15 minute journey from Burtonport (Ailt An Chorráin) to Arranmore Island. On a calm and sunny day the view on the crossing are just heavenly. Sometimes there are dolphins too.
Map of Arranmore and the coast off Burtonport
The ferrys sail through a narrow passage past a scattering of islands on the way to Arranmore.
Rutland Island (Inis Mhic an Doirn) lies between Burtonport and Arranmore, Donegal. William Burton Conyngham (a local landowner for whom Burtonport takes its Anglised form) had warehouses, a street of houses, a post office and a school built c. 1784 to capitalised on a the abundant herring fishing. Unfortunately, the herring disappeared very early in the 1800’s and the station fell into disuse. The island was inhabited until the 1950s. These are the remains of the fish factory and landing stage on Rutland Island.
Opposite is Inishcoo Island with Mount Errigal in the distance peeping out from under the clouds. The jetty in the left hand corner belongs the magnificent Inishcoo House (see painting below)- once a coast guard house, built in the C18th.
Inishcoo House, Ireland (SOLD)
There are several tiny holiday homes dotted across the islands (and cows)
Ferry Home (Arranmore, Donegal) by Emma Cownie SOLD
A you can see the views are quite idyllic. Whether from the ferry or from the island. To be honest, I wish the ferries were like the Circle Line on the London Underground, where you can ride the tube rround and round (it takes and hour and an half apparently, I have never done it) and you could ride them back and forth to the island all day!
Washing Line, Arranmore by Emma Cownie SOLD
Some more recent works….
A Home on Arranmore, West Donegal, Ireland by Emma Cownie
I was delighted to give permission to Eugene Vesey, poet and author, to use my artwork on the back of his book “Opposite Worlds”. In the story, the main character Frank spends his honeymoon with Mary on Gola island.
Someone told me that once we got to Ireland, “it will be like being on holiday everyday!” Hmmm, I have had some pretty eventful holidays in the past. Funny how the disasters are more memorable that the sunny easy holidays. Let me see. Here are three that come to mind; we once got flooded in a campsite in Yorkshire, had a sleepless night holding on to the tent during a gale at a campsite in the South of France, and finally we drove a tempermental campervan around Ireland a decade ago. It only started some of the time. A helpful Polish guy got it started very early in the morning so we could catch the ferry in Wexford.
Knockfola, Donegal
So far, this “holiday-everyday-life” is proving to be pretty good (that’s a English understatement, by the way). There were quite a few “bumps” to start with, however. A lot of things seem to go wrong at the same time. At first we could not get into the studio, as the door lock was jammed, then one of our dogs, little Mitzy had a stroke (the vets was over an hour’s drive away), Bingo the cat got lost and finally the toilet flooded and we couldn’t use it for several days.
The studio makers sent someone all the way from County Tyrone to replace the lock so we could get in! The vets kept Mitzy in over the weekend and thank to a pile of drugs and lots of basket-rest, she has recovered well. Her balance isn’t great and her head is at a permanent tilt but she chase after the ball again and is still telling us what to do.
Mitzy (with Séamas and Biddy)
Ann Marie at Burtonport Animal Rescue put out a notice on their facebook page, asking people to look out for Bingo, and it was shared many times. She gave us useful advice and support too.
They do great work and need donations to keep up that great work. You can donate via this link.
Thankfully, Bingo came home late at night, after the traffic had died down. The flooding toilet issue is more complicated, has been solved for the time being but will need some more work in future. Don’t ask me to explain it.
This is my one and only summer drees
We had a heatwave with unprecedent temperatures of 30 degrees celsius soon after we arrived. This was very unexpected and I had thrown out a lot of my clothes during the move and I only had one summer dress. Fortunately, I did have bathers so we could go for a swim in the sweathering heat. That was fantastic. The water was crystal clear and surprisingly warm (or not as cold as I thought it would be).
Swimming at Cruit Island, Donegal
As for painting. That was bit more difficult. I was not able to paint for two months as I was either helping un/packing up the house, paints were packed away or I was just too exhausted to do anything. I knew it was going take a while to find my painting groove again as I needed to recover my energy levels and adjust to a new location. I am very fussy about arranging my paints and the position of my easel and it took a while sort things out to my satisfaction. It took longer than I thought but I am getting there now.
The Old House at Marameelan
What do I love about Donegal? The way it looks and sounds. Everytime we take a trip into the nearest town of Dungloe, to post a painting or to do our food shopping, I marvel at the views. At night, when I awake, I listen to the slience. I find it so relaxing. I had had enough of the noise of city life. Donegal is so beautiful too. There is so much abundant nature on our door step, quite literally under our feet. The length of the west coast of Ireland is called the Wild Atlantic Way, and it really is wild in every sense.
A carpet of Flowers at Gweedore
Red deer, seen on land only 5 minutes walk from the cottage (photo by Séamas Johnston)
The weather is very mercurial. I thought I was used to rainy weather, living in Swansea in Wales, but this is something else. I may awake to thunder and downpours, but by lunchtime the sun is shining and the sky is full of fluffy clouds. Sometimes it may rain, the sun will come out and then it rains again, all in the space of ten minutes. Today, we are in the midst of a gale, that no one has seen fit to name, with 50 mile-per-hour winds. Standing outside in the buffeting winds is surprisingly envigorating. I think its the negative ions.
Donegal Clouds
It may be grey all all day or the sun might come out in a bit. Passing a window, I might be struck by the beauty of the clouds. Sometimes I point them out to Seamas, or take a photo. Often just drink them in. I hope I never stop marvelling at them.
Come and Visit
In my Viewing Gallery
We are now in a position to receive visitors to our private gallery, at the rear of Meadow Cottage, on a appointment only basis. We ask that social distancing is observed and that masks are worn inside the gallery.
Please call either our mobile no.s +44 782757 4904 or
+353 87963 5699 or landline +353 74 959 1593 to book a viewing.
I have found that my energy is slowly but steadily returning after my operation on my broken leg in March (although painting light is shrinking with the shortening days). I spent much of the spring and early summer sitting in my chair wishing I could go outside into the fresh air or climb the stairs to my attic studio. I painted watercolours instead, and thought a lot about colour and composition. I learnt to simplify my images and edit them with more ruthlessness than I had done before.
Gola Houses (watercolor)
I have attempted to carry these lessons into the compositions of my oil paintings. I suspect that I need to go further. I am always torn between a desire to accurately convey what is probably a well-known location to local people, and the need to create an effective composition. In otherwords I want to create an engaging painting, regardless of whether a viewer has visited Donegal or not.
Blue Door, Gola (oil on canvas) SOLD
Here’s an example of editing my composition. I used several reference photos for this painting of Bád Eddie (Eddie’s Boat) but you will see that I decide to leave out the all the lamp posts. I felt they made the picture look cluttered. I also left out the the skylights on a couple of the houses for the same reason. I did, however, decide to include a couple of series of fence posts on the right side of the painting as they lead the eye down the hill.
One of the reference photos for Bád Eddie at Bunbeg
Bád Eddie, Ireland. (Oil on canvas) SOLD
I have gone further with my editing of the reference image in my most recent painting of Arranmore. This is a painting of a (probably abandoned) white house that I had painted a watercolour of earlier in the year .
The White house, Arranmore, Ireland (watercolour)
A lot of the compositional work is done when composing the reference photograph, but there is often a bit more tinkering to be done to clarify the image further.
The White Bridge, Arranmore, Ireland (100cm x 65cm) (Oil on canvas)
Here you can see that I have again removed most of the telegraph poles, just leaving one further down the road. The fence posts as usual, get to stay. The ones on the right led the eye down the road. The central part of the painting on the right side is too cluttered for my liking too. It’s very confusing for the viewer. I have since discovered that this is because there are too many “tangents“. The word “tangent” usually just indicates that two things are touching, but in art the term describes shapes that touch in a way that is visually annoying or troublesome. This also describes those telegraph poles I removed. It all makes for an image that is easier to “read”.
Tangent Chart – From emptyeasel.com
I also removed a several of the buildings so that there is a clear view over to the tiny island of Inishkeeragh with its solidary summer home. Finally, I also simplied the pair of yellow buildings to the far right. I found the semi-abstract result pleasing and I felt that the lack of detail balanced the detail in mud, rocks and grasses on the near side to the left of the painting. I like to balance detail with areas of flat colour, such as the roof of the house or the sea, as I think that too much detail all over makes the head sore. The human brain doesn’t process images in this way any way. Our eyes/brains will focus on one or two areas and “generalise” other larger areas of colour.
Thus, I hope I have created a succesful painting rather than slavishly copying a photograph.
White Bridge Arranmore, (in situ)
Read more about avoiding confusing tangents in compositions here
