Two paintings to go to Kenmare for the arts festival exhibition.

Over my years as a freelancer, I’ve learned the usefulness of deadlines. They motivate you. So as a way of motivating myself to make new works (and to justify splurging on some lovely small deep-edge canvases) I made a note of a couple of Arts Festivals going on in the west and south-west of Ireland and painted a couple of pieces and entered them for the arts festival in Kenmare, County Kerry, for which they were accepted. :-D

Both show scenes from County Kerry. The Whistler of Gleninchaquin is from a sketch I made of a young lad who couldn’t get wifi that far up the valley so started practicing his tin whistle instead. I took a photo of the sketch and gave him the original. On Top of Cruach Mharain was from a photo I snapped of three tourists from one large family from the US who climbed the hill and were in awe of the views – and why wouldn’t they be, we were looking over the end of the Dingle Peninsula after all: Ballyferriter, Smerwick Harbour, the Three Sisters and of course the Blasket Islands. It was during that walk that I made the drawing you can see in my previous blog about drawing and painting en plein air.

Update: I am delighted to share that one of these painting was sold during the event: The Whistler of Gleninchaquin has gone to a new home. I hope the buyer enjoys his or her purchase!

Anyway, the exhibition will be on in the gallery at the Butter Market and will be officially launched on 31 August between 4 and 6 pm, and will run until 28 August.

EDIT: I’m delighted to share the news that the Whistler painting was sold during the exhibition. I brought the other painting home and looked at it, and decided to work on it again because I wasn’t happy about the background. I like it way better now.