A selection of some of my paintings of the area. Please check my website to see my full collection of work
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.
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.
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.
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.
Read more about my use of acrylics here
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.
Find out more
Fanad
https://www.ireland.com/en-gb/destinations/regions/fanad-head/
John Newton
http://www.amazinggrace.ie/newton-in-ireland.html
Urban Minimal
Several years ago I embarked on what I called an “Urban Minimal“project; focusing on the streets of Brynmill, in Swansea, South wales, where we used to live. This work culminated in an exhibition in the Cardiff MadeinRoath festival (read more here).
My original “rules” for urban minimalism composition and painting
Urban Minimal in Derry/Londonderry
I am developing this approach with Derry. I like to paint relatively ordinary street scenes without people. The sunlight and the colours give them drama and beauty. Each of the painting is really about light. I am still attempting to simplify forms but this is something I am always failing at.
On the plus side, I think that my colours have become much softer and more subtle. I think this is partly a response to the northern light which is bluer and less golden than that in Swansea. Its is also because I have got better at achieving naturalistic colours. My confidence has also improved. In the past I chose brigher colours to make a painting more exciting.
I have slowly come to the realisation that such excitment is like hidden sugar in my food. Yes, its initially appealling but it can give you a bit of a headache!
I have enjoyed exploring the streets of Derry. I feel I know the place a bit better for painting them.
Its hard to find a car-free Queen Street but early on a Sunday morning it is possible.
Eagle-eyed readers will spot a car in the mid-distance. I thought I’d see whether a car would negatively disturpt the composition. I don’t think it did.
Some of my earlier paintings of Derry.
I have been experimenting with different supports and media. The Jessica Brilli painting on wood got me curious about how it would be different from painting on canvas.
I could find very little information about the experience of painting on wood panels (but lots of information on how to prepare them). So I realised that I had to use trial and error to find out. I ordered some gessoed wood panels from Cork Art Supplies who delivered them very promptly.
My first effort was this painting. I painted a light ground of red ochre in oil before I laid down the painting. I found that achieving fine detail was much easier than on canvas. However, the colours didn’t behave the way I expected them too. My sky started off too dark. I found it was easy to wipe off the oil paint and repaint it a lighter shade. I found that white areas also needed a further layer once they had dried to give them the solidity I required. The painting took much longer than I am used to to dry.
I have painted in acrylics on canvas before and struggled with the speed with with the paint dries on the palette. I used to find the the paint had gone hard in the 20 minutes since I started painting. It drove me mad. However, after extensive reserach I worked out how to make a wet palette so that I could slow down the drying time of paint on the palette. I decided to use the quick-drying acrylic paint as an underpainting.
The acrylic painting was more of a sketch than a proper painting. The process forced me to simplify my images further and the final layer of oil paint gave the image a greater depth and richness of colour.
Some of the acrylic sketches really challenged me as the paint did not move and work in the way I was used to with oils. The greens and yellows were too transparent and looked messy. It was impossible to lighten colours, like the leading edge of the fence post, once they had gotten too dark.
The final layer of oil paint, however, enabled me to make my colours much more opaque and to to add much more detail in places, especially on the wire fence.
My final painting was a studies in mauves, blues and greys. I had added an additional layer of light grey gesso as a ground before I started painting.
I enjoyed experimenting and I ended up painting several painting at the same time, as I waited for paint to dry between layers. The whole process forced me to confront my short-comings as a painter of acrylics. I did not enjoy that. It made me feel uncomfortable and brought out my “imposter” anxieties. I need to do much more work in this area to develop my skills.
It was also rather time-consuming and probably not a great project to undertake in the winter months, in Donegal, when good light is in very short supply. I am not sure that I would spend so much time on the underpaintings in future, as I liked my first painting the best. Although I would where there are large areas of white. I did enjoy painting on the wood panel and I will continue to experiment with them.
Last Thursday morning Bingo, one of my two cats, collapsed in the front garden under a hedge and we had to take him on the long drive to the vets to end his suffering. It broke my heart. I had had him for over a decade and loved him dearly. Hattie, his cat companion of the last 6 years, misses him too and she has been outside looking for him. That’s even sader. We are keeping her indoors for now.
So my concentration hasn’t been great. I have struggled to write anything, although I had almost finished another blog. Every time, I looked at images, trying decide what painting to start next, I am crippled by indecision. So I have been painting instead a series of small studies. Playing with composition, and simplifying images. The idea is to reduce detail to the minimum.
I then moved on to slightly larger canvases. The photographs of the paintings don’t quite capture their colour. Unfortunately, they have a blueish cast to them.
Inishbofin #3 30x24cm
I will continue with these and hopefully I will find it within me to paint some much larger versions. In the meantime, we have a large rescue cat we have named Tadhg (pronunced “Tag”) from Burtonport Animal Rescue, in the office. He is named after a famous Irish rugby player, called Tadhg Furlong, on account of his robust physique.
Unfortunately, Hattie hissed at him when she first saw him, so we are introducing them very, very slowly. Swapping scents and feeding them on opposite sides of the same door etc. Tadhg was a stray and hasn’t had much experience of the indoor life, so he’s getting used to things like doors (they move when you rub up against them, you know) and mirrors (there’s a big black and white cat in window thing in the bedroom next door he’s worried about). He also loves carpets and heating. When he wants a break he sits under the chair in the corner of the room. I hope we can successfully integrate Tadhg into our animal family!
See all the studies here
The rain finally stopped yesterday morning and the temperature rose a few degrees. We just had three days of steady rain. The temperatures also went up a bit. I was amused to discover that this “event” made the news. The headline in “The Donegal Daily” an online newspaper read: “Weather- Another Mild Day in Store for Donegal”. This publication is favourite of mine. It is a heart-warming mixture of stories with happy endings (swimmers get into trouble in rip tide but they are all rescued by a passer by and a lifeboat crew), lost dogs, sport stories and local crime cases (often from two years ago).
Anyway, we felt encouraged by the dry (ish) weather to do some light food shopping in Dungloe and then drive to an Affordable Art Fair in Derrybeg, Gweedore. This Art Fair was held at An Gaillearai, which is located at Ionad Aislann, Na Doira Beaga (Derrybeg).
We have never been to Ionad Aislann before and I was very interested to see what this cultural centre was like. I know that “Ionad” means a centre of some sort in Irish but I didn’t know what the word “Aislann” meant. I tried looking it up on google translate but drew a blank so I thought it might be someone’s name. It was wrong. “Áislann” is a word derived from combining two words from the Irish vocabulary of South West Donegal, Áiseanna (facilities) and Lann (building).
The centre also houses, amongst other things, a public library and nursery. When I looked it up here I discovered that the building hosted much more than that: a theatre/cinema, sports hall, meeting rooms, local history centre, PC centre, a gym and a tea room! This cultural centre was set up in 1992 expressly to cater for local people as well as for visitors to the area, including the many artists like me who come to live here. It was also meant to help strengthen bonds within the local community via cultural/artistic pursuits and leisure activities.
The Gallery is large and airy and there was plenty of room for visitors and artists. Everyone was wearing masks too which was reassuring.
Some of the artists showing include (in no particular order); Ian Gordon, Cathal MacGinley, Peadar McDaid, Heidi Nguyen , Mary Toland, Gay OToole and Nora Duffy. We had the pleasure of meeting and chatting with two of the exhibiting artists, Heidi Nguyen and Gay O’Toole. We met Cathal Mac Fhionnghaile/Cathal MacGinley when we visited Inishbofin last month. Here is a selection of the work on display.
Karol Mac Geirbheith
Karol Mac Geirbheith
As our house is already over flowing with paintings we generally don’t buy other people’s art (although I have one painting by Welsh landscape artist, Warren Heaton, in the bedroom) but we changed the habit of a lifetime yesterday and bought two small paintings at the art fair. I know that Séamas wanted to buy more. We left the two paintings on the wall with red stickers next to them (hoping that sign of success would encourage more sales) and will go back on Thursday to pick them up.
After so long in lockdown and avoiding people, it was really great to go out somewhere and to meet new people. Ionad Aislann certianly did its job of helping to strengthen the bonds between local community via cultural/artistic pursuits and leisure activities. It was well worth a visit and if you are in area I would highly recommend stopping by. The Art Fair is on for several more days, from 12 to 5pm until this Thursday 14th October 2021.
Our visit to the island of Inishbofin last month was one of those rare “perfect” days in life. The weather was warm and sunny with enough of a sea breeze to blow away any viruses. We have been looking and admiring from afar the tiny, remote island of Inishbofin, off the coast of Donegal, for quite a while now.
It is 3km/2miles from the pier at Machaire Uí Rabhartaigh / Magheraroarty but that didn’t stop me painting the shoreline of the island a couple of years ago. I also wrote about the island (here) long before I ever got the chance to visit it.
Emma Cownie
It is very easy to confuse the Donegal island with the more southerly Inishbofin near Galway on the internet as google likes to show you maps and ferry pages for the Galway island, even if you type in “Ferry times inishbofin, Donegal”. I think this must because a regular ferry service in Donegal was only started this summer by Harry Coll and his brother, Owenie. Harry has recently retired from his life as a fisherman in Killybegs, Donegal, and decided to buy a boat called Saoirse na Mara II ( which translates, I think, as “Freedom of the Sea II”) in order to run a daily ferry service to the island. As far as I can tell, they have not received any government funding to help them in their venture.
You will notice that the flyer for the ferry is in Irish and English. This is an Irish speaking area of Ireland, the Gaelteacht. This was the first place I heard Irish spoken this year, in fact. Inishbofin is an Irish-speaking community and it was a real pleasure to hear people speaking Irish/Gaeilge, although I could only pick out the odd word as I only have a very basic understanding of the language. We were told by the islanders that “Inishbofin” is actually pronouced “Inish-bofin-yeay”. You can here that pronunciation in this Irish-language video here.
The name Inis Bó Finne means “island of the white cow” in English. The white cow, Glas Gaibhnenn, was owned by a blacksmith on the mainland but was stolen by Balor, the mythical one-eyed King of neighbouring Tory Island and hidden on Insishbofin. This wasn’t any old cow, it was a magical cow. It had huge teats that never ran dry which produced an unending supply of milk. Obviously, such production required a great deal of fuel and in no time the cow ate all the grass on the island and had to move on elsewhere. The island is tiny, a mere 2km long and 1km wide or about half a square mile/300 acres so I could well believe that the Bó Finne ate all the grass pretty quickly. Yet, although it looks tiny from the mainland yet it doesn’t feel that tiny when you are on the island.
The first inhabitants are believed to have been of Scandinavian origin, who arrived at the time of the Viking raids on Ireland’s coast in the C9th and C10th. Their descendants are thought to have been exterminated by Cromwellian soldiers in the mid-C17th. I wondered whether they had all been killed as I noticed that all the islanders had blue eyes, possibly suggestive of Scandinavian genes. Subsequently the island was settled by mainlanders from Donegal escaping oppression, poverty and famine. We met one islander who jokingly said his family had “recently” moved to the island, in the 1840s.
It is said that the islands potatoes, like those of neighbouring Tory Island were unaffected by the potato blight which destroyed the main food source of Ireland’s peasantry in the mid-C19th. The blight, and other factors (such as criminal mismanagement of resources by the British Government) led to An Gorta Mór or “The Great Hunger“; starvation and famine fever which led to over a million deaths and mass emigration.
As recently as the 1960s, a population of roughly 120 islanders enjoyed a tranquil, if tough, existence, fishing and farming. Nowadays, only a few islanders spend all year on the island, farming on a part-time basis. Many of the houses on the island have been renovated, mostly for use as holiday homes. From March to October many of the former inhabitants return to fish for lobster, crab and Atlantic salmon, or to gather shellfish and pick edible seaweeds such as cairrigin (carrageen) and creathnach (dulse) from the rocks. Other families move back for the school holiday in the summer months. The new ferry service has made visiting the island even easier for families and day trippers.
The morning we visited the island there were lots of people waiting at the Magheraroarty Pier for the ferry and the Coll brothers made several trips to bring them all over to the island. The trip only took ten minutes and the sea was smooth. Stepping off the ferry we were transported to a tranquil and calm world. All the time I was on the island I saw one car and heard only birdsong and the wind. It was bliss.
Inishbofiners working on a roof
Drying in the sun
The island has two halves connected by a narrow, sandy col. There are two villages on the island, one near the harbour of An Clachan (Cloghan), and the other a short distance away at An Garradh Ban, also known as East Town.
Map of Inishbofin from http://www.boffinferrydonegal.com
The southern half of the island is fertile and was cultivated in the past in the traditional “clachan and rundale” manner, involving communal usage of scarce arable soil and cattle pasture. The ancient field boundaries are still in place, though the fields have now reverted to grassland, providing essential habitat for geese and especially corncrakes – flourishing here, unlike in the rest of the country.
Aerial View of Inishbofin (from BoffinFerryDonegal.com facebook page)
The islanders are very friendly and several people stopped to chat to us to tell us about the island. They have a reputation for speaking to visitors (preferably in Irish Gaelic, but in English too) and like telling stories about the island and its history. One of the islanders, Daniel, mentioned the mystery of the missing millionaire. In 1933 Arthur Kingsley Porter, a professor of Fine Arts at Harvard University, bought Glenveagh Castle in the heart of the Derryveagh Mountains and made it his home. He also built a house on Inishbofin which he used for weekend breaks with his wife. On the morning of 8th July 1933 Kingsley Porter disappeared after going for a walk the morning after a massive storm, and was never seen again.
Conspiracy theories abound. Had he accidentally fallen from a cliff or had he taken his own life? Had Arthur been murdered? Or had he faked his own death and re-emerged with a new identity on mainland Europe? All of these are a possibility, as Arthur was gay at a time when it was illegal and regarded as deeply shameful (50 states criminalized same-sex sexual activity until 1962). To make things worse, Harvard, Arthur’s employer was running an anti-gay campaign. The college held a secret court to expose and expel gay students and faculty. Two students, accused of being gay, had already died by suicide. Arthur was fearful his homosexuality would be revealed and there would be a scandal. So here we have a possible motive for suicide.
At the inquest – the first to be held in Ireland without a body – his widow, Lucy, told of her frantic six-hour search with local fishermen. “I think my husband must have slipped off the cliffs, fallen into the sea and been carried away,” she said. Some of the islanders thought that his wife might have done away with him. Yet at the same time there were rumours of a boat that had been seen near the island at the time of his disappearance. If anyone had the money to start a new life in a new country it was Arthur, and Arthur knew Paris with its gay nightlife well as he had studied there as a student in 1923. I suspect however, that if he had started a new life in Paris, he would have eventually been recognised by one of the many American emigrées who also lived there.
Anchorage on Inishboffin is too exposed to leave boats afloat and so they are pulled up onto the foreshore.
Inishbofin has witnessed a number of maritime tragedies. In 1929 an island fishing boat was cut in half by a steamer in thick fog off Bloody Foreland, and all but one man drowned. Another boat was swamped in 1931 in the “keelie”, the sound between Inishboffin and InishDooey. During the Second World War, in December 1940, a Dutch ship by the name of Stolwiik broke down after leaving a covoy in a westerly gale. The Arranmore lifeboat made truly heroic rescue of the crew. Read more about it here.
The island has a stunning coastline and a view that include Mount Errigal, the Seven Sisters and seascapes stretching from Cnoc Fola to Tory Island.
I will end with some a film and some paintings of Inishbofin by the very talented artist Cathal McGinley. His paintings were on exhibition in the parish hall on the island – my photos aren’t great but I hope you get a sense of the intense colours and energy of the paintings. Cathal chatted to us outside his beautiful cottage for over an hour and kindly gave us a cup of tea and a bag of carrigeen.
It was quite a shock getting off the ferry at the busy pier at Magheroarty after the incredible peace of the island. We will be back.
Getting there – The Ferry
The journey only takes 10 minures (weather permitting)
To book the ferry from Magheroarty Pier to Inishboffin Island:
– Telephone Harry on 087 4345892
– Text – Whatsapp – Viber message to 087 4345892
– Email on: boffinferrydonegal@gmail.com
– Social media (facebook / Instagram) www.boffinferrydonegal.com
Find out more about Inishbofin
About the Corncrake
https://www.corncrakelife.ie/inishbofin-and-inishdooey
More about the mysterious “death” of Arthur Kingsley Porter
About the boats and maritime incidents
see the excellent book Donegal Islands, by Ros Harvey and Greg Wallace (2003)
Before I moved to Donegal, if you had asked me to name a constant feature of Donegal weather, I would have said the wind. Don’t get me wrong – the air here is refreshing. It’s like drinking water when you are thirsty. My husband says its the negative ions. There is usually a breeze, sometimes its a gentle one but in autumn and winter it can become a punishing gale that howls around the house, making it hard to sleep at night.
We have a grey breezy day here today, with rain forecast for later. Hopefully the breeze will help blow away the midges that are hanging around our garden. Midges, if you havent come across them before, are tiny flying insects that, at best annoy you and at worst bite you. The Irish version may or may not be related to the infamous Highland version, I am not sure. Yesterday afternoon we watched them swarming in a cloud outside our kitchen door! They like grey damp days, not like the days in my three paintings!
These paintings attempt to capture this summer’s stillness when there was very little breeze and it was uncharacteristically hot. Clouds are usually a feature of the skies here but there were several days when there were none. It’s climate change manifesting itself in these spates of hot summer days and (soon to come) fierce autumn and winter storms.
Here’s my summer newsletter. I am shutting up shop for a month from 20th June to 20th July. All going well, we will be safely installed and open for business (online at least) in Donegal by mid-July. I am already longing to get back to my painting routine. I can’t quite believe that after being ground so long by my broken leg and the pandemic that we will actually move house/studio to another country by then. It’s a huge step! Fingers crossed it all goes smoothly!
There is a unique architectural gem, perched upon the high cliffs above the shores of the north Derry coastline. High on the cliffs is an elegant roman-style round temple; a beautiful rotunda. It is a wonderful surprise. There is none other in Ireland. It looks out across Lough Foyle to Donegal to the north and on a clear day the Scottish Isles can be seen to the north-east. This remarkable building is Mussenden Temple built by the Earl Bishop Frederick Hervey of Derrry.
Inspiration from the Sperrins. These mountains are mostly moorland and blanket bog. It’s a sparse roling landscape. Populated by sheep, bog grass (Eriophorum angustifolium) and muddy SUVs, and farmhouses, old and new.
Some old farm buildings have long-been abandoned by people but are still used for farm equipment and shelter for sheep. So long as there is a tin roof, the walls will last years and years.
The robots are coming for our Art. Many artists are losing their ability to make a living thanks to AI Art and we will all be poorer financially and creatively for it. Here’s why its a problem and what we can do about it.
Happy Easter – Here’s a quick catch up of my latest news and new work.
