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.