Tús/ Beginning

Some of us wait for permission, for an invitation, or we wait until “everything is perfect”. ..

We wait until “next week”, “next time”. Until we feel strong enough or good enough.

For me this word holds the promise of adventure, an invitation to “why not”, it’s something I feel every sunrise. The reminder that we are here for a brief moment .. 

When did we stop taking the first step, the one that’s filled with the I-don’t-know-about-this? 

This painting had been left aside for many many months and I couldn’t make friends with it, recently it crossed the line. Happy with it now, framed, and waiting for the perfect place to be.

Tús/Beginning

I have integrated Irish words and phrases into my work as I learn and connect more with them. The mystery of fog rolling in on a coast never fails to impress me.

When you’re surrounded there’s a stillness and a quiet that’s like an early morning after a big snowfall… the silence is everything.  Gordon Hempton said “silence is the think-tank of the soul” and as I really think about my work I recall places and times, and imagine places I’ll visit someday. 

What is it for me? Why arrival ? Looking back a full 2 years to a day on Arranmore .. I was alone with the sea below me. Cloaked in a heavy mist, I walked along (a little precariously, I admit) and I realised it was the first hike I’d done completely alone for 35years. One of the times I had on that solo trip that gave me a huge amount of space to think. 

Magical and mysterious.. close to other, close to the land, a real comfort in homecoming. 

Arrival - a cloak of mist, a fog arriving holding the magic of a story. This holds the story of the féth fíada - the magical mist or veil spoken of in Irish Mythology that renders supernatural beings, like the Tuatha Dé Danann, invisible to human eyes as they cross to this world.

The story goes that Manannán mac Lir ('son of the Sea'), son of Lir, is a sea god, warrior, king and guardian of the otherworld. He is described as over-king of the surviving Tuatha Dé after the advent of humans (Milesians) and uses the mist of invisibility (féth fíada) to cloak the whereabouts of his home and protect them as they move from place to place.