We have a winner!

We closed the win-a-painting competition late last night and a few last minute additions managed to squeeze in. In the end the winner of the draw was Magdalena Bryla. Congratulation Magdalena! Magdalena is taking a little time to choose her painting and then we’ll frame it and send if off to her.

If you didn’t get a chance to enter this time or did but didn’t win. We will be having a competition again. I’ll let you know when it starts.

Lean on me

Cherries are in season here. I’ve been seeing them popping up on my American Daily Painter’s blogs for a while and have been looking forward to getting stuck in to painting them myself. I have a few ideas for new paintings from things I saw in Kerry so I’m looking forward to that too.

 lean on me 7x7inch oil on gesso bord

Waiting for her pint to settle

Maggie, in O’Flaherty’s in Dingle, waiting for her pint to settle!

We’re just back from Kerry. It’s a long drive . 4hrs for us Irish is a marathon, only to be endured by

1. decent play-lists,

2. DVDs for the kids and

3. a trailer load of snacks.

But before I tell you about Kerry, there was Purdy. Thank you to all of you who texted, called, facebooked, emailed or commented. As I said before, I am constantly reminded of the kindness of people.

Killarney Art Gallery

Earlier today we drove down to Killarney to visit Declan and Amelie at the Killarney Art Gallery and to see the paintings in the show. Great news! Two have already sold while showing on Valencia Island despite the ferry being cancelled most of the week due to high seas.

Here are some photos from my resident photographer (my daughter, Aoife)

You can see the show and view the paintings here.

Stradbally strand

What to say about a weekend under the Kerry mountains, along the most beautiful coastland in the country. Anything I say will sound like either an exaggeration or a boast. So lets just say that it was breathtaking and that I happen to know for a fact that Paul Henry didn’t use artistic license in painting his mountains so blue.

Win a painting

Tomorrow is the last day that you can refer a friend and be entered into the win a painting competition. If you have already done so make sure that either you or your friend has let me know.

let sleeping dogs lie..

My old friend gus again.  This (top of page) is a study that I did before the larger Gus painting.

Let sleeping dogs… 7×7 inch oil on gesso bord

Ok so those of you who know that my first solo show opened in Kerry yesterday will be expecting me to be all excitement and butterflies, and of course I am, but I’m afraid that we are somewhat of a wounded family this morning as Purdy, our gray cat, was knocked down by a car yesterday and killed.

I am constantly reminded that generally people are good. Case in point, a lady driving by saw Purdy dead on the road and thought that it would be awful to see her mushed. So she stopped her car and lifted her body from the road, took my number from her collar and called me. Most people would have driven by (me too probably) and most would not have wanted to touch a just-dead cat even if she looked OK. But she was thinking of the owners – us. What unasked for, without - strings, kindness is that

Here she is as a kitten. You can see that she had Rob in the palm of her hand and not the other way around from day one.

So we’re off to Kerry with heavy hearts this morning. The kids are still very upset. I know that these experiences are  part of the whole learning about life and death, of loving and grieving. I know I wept for many a dead cat or dog as a child but I’m sorry for the kids and for Rob and for me. We’ll be fine (of course) but hey it’s sad right? 

We’ll be down in Kerry for a long weekend and I will try to post on Monday if I can find an Internet cafe near by. Otherwise see ya all on Tuesday. I’ll take lots of photos of the show and the gallery and show you then. In the meantime the Killarney Art Gallery’s website is now live, so you can check the show out online.

Purdy

There must be twenty paintings inspired by her so we’ll certainly keep some of those to remind us of her. As it happens, I did this one a day or so before she died.

Purdy 7×7 inch oil on gesso bord

Gus

Meet Gus! A beautiful lab softy who very kindly offered to sit for me as long as I agreed to only show his best side!

This is the commission that I was working on over the weekend and below is a photo of the under-painting in acrylic.

Gus 20×20 inch oil on stretched linen