One of the joys of acrylic gouache is that it dries very quickly and is opaque – so it lends itself to this sort of mark making.
Patterned Fields, Rossbeg (Donegal)
Category: Paintings for Sale
Dunree Head, Donegal
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)
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.
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!
See more paintings of Inishowen Peninsula here
Read More
https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/40901824/dunree-fort-dunree-donegal
https://www.govisitdonegal.com/blog/january-2024/between-waves-and-war
Termon House Maghery
Termon House is set above a pebble beach at the north end of Maghery Strand on the West Coast of the Rosses area of Donegal. The elegant white house was most likely built by the Marquis Conyngham or by his predecessor, Montgomery in the 1770’s for the land agent, whose duty it was to collect rent from the local tenants on behalf of the absentee landlord. A Jamaican-born man named Ralph Spence Philips, was in occupancy at Termon House in the 1820s.
In 1822 the previous years extremely wet weather rotted all the potatoes in the area which resulted in famine. This was happening across Ireland and around a million individuals came to depend upon government aid during this particular crisis. Government agents in Dublin Castle allocated funds for acquisition of foodstuffs in Ireland, to be distributed to the poor at reduced prices or without cost, and to finance local relief works, such as roads, canals and harbours, or other projects deemed of benefit.
It may well have been Philips who initiated the building of the Famine Walls around the property as a means of feeding the local starving population, although he had no tenants of his own. The Public Works Committee in Dublin Castle, however, rejected Philips application for reimbursement and this meant a personal loss to him of £1500 from paying the labourers at a rate of 1d per day!
There is another theory, however, that is that it was the Reverend Valentine Pole Griffith, the Protestant Rector at the height of the Great Famine, 1845-1850, who had the walls built. The Rev Griffith was one of the leading members of the Famine Relief Committee, who worked heroically on behalf of the poor. He set up public works in Maghery, would attend meetings all over the Rosses and write to anyone who he thought could help. The land around Termon House was owned by the Church of Ireland it may well be he who arranged for the massive walls to be built along the road there. On the day we visited it was overcast and my photos do not to justice the scale and extent of the walls.
You can see the famine walls on the right hand side of the house and to the far left side of the outhouses in my painting of Termon House (below). The rocks in the foreground are natural part of the rocky Rosses landscape.
What is undisputed is that this extraordinary and extensive system of walls standing approximately three metres high (10 foot)! The extensive system of tall walls built during this famine around his land is a testament to these hungry builders as they have withstood over 190 years of Atlantic storms.
Today, beautiful Termon House is leased by the Irish Landmark Trust and is available for holiday rental.
More Information
See my paintings of West Donegal here
Arranmore Swansong
We have been living with a lot of uncertainty since summer last year. This is why I have found it difficult to write regularly. Last summer, Biddy, our aged Collie-cross was so frail I didn’t come to Donegal with her. I didn’t think the long bumpy car journeys would be fair on her. The vets are an hour away. She was pts in November last year. It was an honour to look after her in her final days and I still miss her. I will write about Effie in a separate post, soon.
It is with a heavy heart that I say that we are planning to leave Donegal. It’s a difficult place to live without family near by. It’s a stunning place and the recent sunshine has really highlighted that. It is possibly the most beautiful landscape I have ever seen and I will be very sad to leave. I am not entirely sure where we are going. I will let you know when we know.
In the meantime, I have painted a series of small paintings of Arranmore Island.
If you are interested in buying an Arranmore painting you can here: https://emmafcownie.com/product-category/paintings-ireland-emma-cownie/donegal-paintings-emma-cownie/donegal-islands
New Year Sale – 30% off
To Celebrate the New Year I am giving 30% off all work on my website – to get the discount you have to enter a code at the checkout. Where’s the code? Join my email list and it will be sent to you, automatically. The sale ends on 15th January.
If you have already joined my mailing list and haven’t had my latest newsletter with the sale code check your SPAM folder.
Looking at Paintings in Real Life is Good for you
A long time ago, when I was a student, my favourite place to visit was the National Museum of Wales. The Davies collection in particular. The Davies were two sisters, Gwendoline and Margaret, amassed one of the greatest British art collections of the 20th century and bequeathed it (260 works!) to the National Museum of Wales. That’s Girl Power!
They had great taste. Those paintings became like my friends. I visited them often and spent a long time looking closely at them. They excited, inspired and comforted me. Even now when I look at reproductions of them online I have a strong reaction to them.
I used to think, this was because I was an artist. I remember peering closely at Monet’s brush strokes and marvelling at how they were laid down. I mean look at this.
A tingle goes down my spine, looking at it. This is what art is meant to do. It’s even better in real life.
Look at Van Gogh’s painting of a rainy day in Auvers. I have never seen better rain (and I have lived in Wales and Ireland – very wet places).
The Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague, is the home of Vermeer’s ‘Girl with the Pearl Earring’. Thew museum recently did some academic research into how visitors responded to artworks. They looked at the neurological mechanisms and emotions underlying the appreciation of perception in art.
The study used EEG and eye-tracking measurements on 20 participants who followed a set route through the Mauritshuis. Five paintings were included on this route: Girl with a Pearl Earring (Johannes Vermeer), The Violin Player (Gerrit van Honthorst), Self-portrait (Rembrandt van Rijn), The Anatomy Lesson of Dr Nicolaes Tulp, (Rembrandt van Rijn), View of Delft (Johannes Vermeer). They also showed them reproductions of the originals and compared their responses. The EEG results showed that the real paintings created a stronger emotional response compared with the poster versions of the same paintings.
“The Girl with a Pearl Earing” created the biggest emotial response. Painting of “The View of Delf” did not score well, and I wondered whether it was because it was a landscape rather than a portrait, not as famous as the “Girl with the Pearl Earing” or people were not familar with the layout of Delf. I have spent a long time looking at historic paintings of London, Swansea and Derry, trying to work out how they relate to the modern day cities. But maybe that’s because I’m pretty geeky. I doubt I had a big emotional response to them, though. Not enough paint!
The EEG results confirm that real paintings (compared to poster versions) also elicited a strong need to approach the paintings. It wasn’t just me wanting to get a close look at the paint! Real art, including the surrounding ambience, lighting, frame also helped evoke an emotional reaction many times more powerful (10x more powerful according to this study) than looking at a poster of a painting.
Some of you will put that in the “No Sh*t, Sherlock” category of scientific “discoveries” – which was my husband’s response when I told him about the study.
I have never seen Vermeer’s painting in real life but my parents have a reproduction in a tiny gold frame. I don’t know if people’s reponses were elicited because its very beautiful, well-composed, very famous, or because its a human face. I suscpect its a combination of all three.
Seeing a famous painting isn’t always rewarding. Maybe you too went to the Louvre in Paris to see the Leonardo’s Mona Lisa and were underwhelmed. Its notoriously small and hard to see as it under glass , far away and surounded by tourists.
There have been times I have come across paintings that I didn’t know and looked at them for a long time. I sat in the Tate (in the 1980s way before it became Tate/Tate Modern) with a lot of Rothko paintings and felt incredibly moved. You just cannot convey that with a reproduction.
So I guess this is a round about way to encourage you to go and see art in real life. You will feel better for it. Possibly. I hope you have some sort of emotional response – tears, laughter, anger even. Barnett Newman, Who’s Afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue III, 1967-68 has been slashed three times.
We can’t all own Monets and Vermeers (and I don’t think any of us should, they are too important for that) but we can be glad that museums hold them in public collections we can see. I would love to see Picasso’s Guernica in real life. I have had it projected on a class room wall when I have taught lessons about the Spanish Civil War – it is a powerfully brutal work. My board was large no where near the full the size of the painting which is 3.49 meters (11 ft 5 in) tall and 7.76 meters (25 ft 6 in) across. Art stimulates our senses, emotions, and intellect. Guernica was also designed to stimulate our empathy. It is as relevant today as it was when it was painted in 1937.
Cardiff National Museum let me visit the stores to see Robert Bevan’s Maples at Cuckfield in 2013, because my husband put in a request to see it after seeing in the gallery the year before after my car accident. This work inspired me to start painting again. It helped with my recovery from PTSD and burn out.
Seeing paintings in real life really does do you good. Dr. Saundra Dalton-Smith has identified looking at art as a way of getting creative rest, one of seven types of rest all people need. Creative rest involves exposing yourself to sources of awe and inspiration and makes you better able to create and problem solve. Painting pictures is even better for you.
Just a reminder that I am offering 20% off all my paintings on my website until 14th October with a code.
Join my mailing list to get the code here.
Read More about the study
https://www.mauritshuis.nl/meisje/#Waarom-dit-onderzoek
20% off sale
Have you seen this Apple advert? Take a moment to watch it. It makes my blood run cold. Surprisingly the tech bros at Apple thought it was a good idea to show this advert which depicts a tower of creative tools and analog items (like paint, trumpets and record players), being crushed into the form of the iPad. It’s a pretty grim vision of the future. It a good visual metaphor for what is happening to creatives right now.
This year has been the toughest year I have experienced as an artist, for a myriad of reasons, and the art market seems to be struggling generally. Yes there’s war in Ukraine and the Middle East (and elsewhere in the world) and “the Cost of Living Crisis” and terrible cold and wet weather in the British Isles hasn’t helped either.
It seems evident that it’s more difficult getting my work seen. I cant help but think that AI and the “enshitification of the internet” is at least partly responsible. I feel a bit like I am being slowly crushed by the Apple crusher. It’s sapping my creative juices. I don’t quite know what to do about it. Cory Doctorow explains how enshittification works “It’s a three-stage process: first, platforms are good to their users. Then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers. Finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, there is a fourth stage: they die.”
This is probably the reason why I can’t find any useful results on google – lots of top ranking website are full of AI nonsense. It’s also why fewer people are seeing my work on the internet. My posts are pretty much hidden on Facebook, Instagram and invisible on X. Images of my paintings do not show up on Google as much as they did say 3 or even 6 months ago. Many other artists report a similar decline in interest from potential customers.
I have started to visit my local library again in search of real books with in- depth facts. The only decent thing on Google these days is Wikipedia. I find that Youtube playlists are so random as to be useless and a search on Pinterest results in either pins I have seen before (in other words I have already saved them) or one unrelated to the search term I just used. Tech companies are burning up the planet with their massive data centres in the hope that one of them will “win” the AI battle and then charge us all for what used to be better quality and free.
What’s this got to do with you? Everything. Doctorow says that enshittification is coming for all industries. “From Mercedes effectively renting you your accelerator pedal by the month to Internet of Things dishwashers that lock you into proprietary dish soap, enshittification is metastasising into every corner of our lives. Software doesn’t eat the world, it just enshittifies it.” Think about your printer – a new printer is cheap as chips but the ink costs a fortune and you cant use non-proprietary ink and your printer will know, and refuse to work.
Corry Doctorow’s big hope is that “Stein’s Law will take hold: anything that can’t go on forever will eventually stop…if everyone is threatened by enshittification, then everyone has a stake in disenshittification.” Actually, there’s a lot more to it than that. You’ll have to read his articles to find out what USA and EU are planning to do to break the monopolies of the big tech comapnies.
I just hope that independent artists like me survive the process or else everyone will have to console themselves with souless AI-derived art their ipad/smartphone/tablet device instead.
See below for some scary examples of AI “Art”. It’s a nonsense view of Derry if you didn’t know.
Just in case some of you are saying. It’s Londonderry not Derry. AI is no better at conjuring up a view of Londonderry. Take a look! Although there is a river this time.
How about Three Cliffs Bay? I have painted that many times. Sure AI will do better at ripping me off. Well, no.
Yes, we can laugh at AI’s efforts and say they look nothing like those places or my paintings but it’s all doing damage. AI can never replace human creativity. AI cannot suffer and struggle like humans. It just produces a wierd pastiche of the thing it is meant to be. It’s expensive rubbish. It’s costing us dearly. Emissions from data centers of the likes of Google, Microsoft, Meta and Apple may be 7.62 times higher than they let on.
We can reverse the enshittification of the internet. Don’t accept those tracking cookies. Try a different search engine. Stay on the website rather than downloading apps (you can use ad blockers on the website you can’t on the app). Don’t buy everything via Amazon if you can buy it in a real life shop.
We can halt the creeping enshittification of every digital device. Put down your phone/tablet and read a book or look at a painting made by a real human being. Join artists’ mailing lists so you can still follow their work no matter what the big platforms do to hide their work.
Oh, did I mention I have a 20% off sale on? Starting Sunday until Monday 14th. You have to join my mailing list for the code 20% code but you can unsubscribe at any time.
Read more
Cory Doctorow on Enshittification of the Internet – https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/27/an-audacious-plan-to-halt-the-internets-enshittification-and-throw-it-into-reverse/
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/sep/15/data-center-gas-emissions-tech
A New Direction: Acrylic Gouache
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.
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.
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.
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.
I painted a load of duff pieces before I started to feel I was getting somewhere with “Ardara”.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Light and shadows continue to be a theme in my work.
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.
About Acrylic Gouache and Stockists
Also direct from Japan Japan Art Supplies – no customs duties for orders under £135. They provide an excellent service with tracking information.
Two new Malin Head paintings
We have been exploring Malin Head a fair bit recently. I really enjoy it’s wildness and dramatic beauty. It’s one of those rare places that is quiet. By quiet, I mean a lack of human busyness. There’s plenty of nature noise like the wind, the hissing of the grasses and leaves as they are blown.This has to be one of the most exposed spots in Ireland.
There is good scattering of robust cottages and relatively few cars. The narrow, winding roads mean that they are not pelting by. Its the quiet and still I hunger for – even when its blowing a gale! The fresh air here is like a refreshing drink of water.
Here are two new Malin Head paintings. The first is “Midsummer at Malin Head” which is a sturdy cottage surrounded by vigorous growths of monbretia. We are a bit early for its distinctive firey orange flowers – the come out from July to September.
The second painting is John’s Cottage, Malin Head (photography with permission of John Gallagher). John was born in the cottage but he now lives with his family (and dog) in a neighbouring cottage a stone’s throw from here.
In the distance are the Urris Hills, also on the Inishowen Peninsula. We spent two days last autumn there, looking for my husband Séamas’s drone crashed on Croaghcarragh (a peak between Urris Hills and Mamore with Mamore Gap in between) after he flew it backward into the mountainside! I spent a longtime waiting for him as various spots on the mountain, looking out towards Dunduff, Clonmany and Malin. The view was magnificent in that direction too. The howling gale that threatened to blow us off the mountain was pretty sobering. Fortunately, the drone was found and it still worked after a night out in the wilds. DJI make pretty tough little drones!
Summer Post-Script
For those who cannot not make it to West Donegal, here’s a brief video of my viewing gallery all set up by Séamas.
If you are thinking of visiting here’s a google map of our location
More Information on Inishowen
Summer on Three Cliffs Bay
Three Cliffs Bay never disappointed. It did not matter how many times I saw it. The sight of it always caused me to catch my breath; when I saw it from the road, from the slopes of Cefn Bryn or from Pennard Cliffs.
It is one of the things I miss about living in South Wales. I imagine it in sunshine, although I am pretty sure the Summer in Wales this years has been as poor as it has been in Ireland. It may well improve. Septembers were often best for sunshine. Just as the schools had gone back!
I used to get up early in the morning and drive down to Pennard to walk along the edge of the golf course, past the dog walkers, to see the sea and take photos. This is a new painting (see above).
Once I found an excellent parking spot opposite the corner shop in Pennard, only to find I had forgotten to put the battery in my camera. I wasn’t carrying a spare. So, I had to drive all the way back to Swansea to fetch the battery. The journey seemed to take forever (as I cursed my stupidity all the waythere and back) but when I got back the conditions were still lovely.
It was low tide and you could see the river, the Pennard Pill, at its meandering best. When you first come to Three Cliffs you assume you can easily cross the Pill in your bare feet. You can at the shoreline but it get deeper quite quickly. There are stepping stones further up stream. In boot-wearing weather, its a short walk inland to cross at the stones. My painting (see below) Two Rock, Three Cliffs is near to the stepping stones.
Here is my other new Gower painting.
Read about my 2018 walk along the Gower Coastal Path here