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I am in the midst of doing portraits in watercolour of Irish Poets. Here are the first few. These will available as prints.

Samuel Beckett

Seamus Heaney.

Brendan Behan

This is an energy portrait for an exquisite lady.

Her energy is vibrant, fearless and buoyant.

Title: “Coming into oneself” Oil on canvas painting. (Private collection).

This is my second self portrait.

Title: “Shifting Mood – energy self portrait” Oil on canvas.

👉🏻 the piece explained :

Sometimes we hide away who we want to be and who we really are. Authenticity and happiness in this life is sometimes achieved when we make huge sacrifices. Some are brave enough to and others are not.

This painting represents the inner war many of us have with trying to survive when we want to cry and choose to solider on even if that means wearing a mask until a time comes when we can step free of it.

This is for anyone who knows what this internal and external struggle is like. I choose blue because right now it reflects the mood. Blue is a colour that suggests peace. It’s the colour of the calm sea and the clear sky, both of which are linked to inner serenity, calm and clarity. Blue was also shown to slow heart rate and breathing, so it can be a good colour to aid in meditation or relaxation. So in trying to find the calm in chaos. It is also associated with the need to feel authentic and unique. With the splash of red I wanted to draw attention to the struggle.

It is the colour associated with energy and aggression. Red has an effect on our physiological state, since it increases heart rate and makes us breathe faster. Red is very noticeable, so an overuse can be irritating or provoke aggression. A red accent on a neutral background can help draw attention to a single element. This is how I have used it here. The white is purity of mind.

“Moving through time” oil on wooden panel.

Utterly lost in the beautiful work of William Turner today. He wasn’t a people’s artist. He was known as cantankerous and often obsolete of real human connection but he connected to the land and nature. And held full adherence to the truthful capturing of the colours within nature.

“He was not concerned with minutiae and refinements, but adopted violent and sometimes complementary colours (to obtain the greatest degree of luminosity) so that the foreground plane was readily dissolved into a simple patch of colour”.

As he evolved he showed how one could see through the great masses of light and shade. On doing so he not only anticipated certain attitudes of the impressionists towards what is ‘seen’ but came to create the great historical synthesis between the Dutch landscape tradition and the universal grandeur of classicism.

In this piece“Moving through time” that I have painted I am dissembling a landscape and honing in on light and imbalance, the same that is found in nature.

#Throwback #art to the front of features piece on the phobia of clowns for Cult magazine. A specific fear of clowns has sometimes been discussed in terms of a specific phobia. The term coulrophobia is a neologism coined in the context of informal “-phobia lists” This was such a cool digital painting to do.