How strangely life works sometimes. Here it is a month since I got home from Ireland. I went on the trip somewhat reluctantly because I had had a difficult workshop in August trying to learn abstract painting with cold wax as there were elements of hot wax that were not satisfying. In time I calmed my fears and decided to just enjoy the fact that I was able to go to that beautiful island, read, walk and just enjoy myself. I did just that. I met wonderful people, saw Dublin with it's plethora of museums and followed RC's instructions. I also set aside my years of dissatisfaction with the contemporary art world and how I felt I was just making stuff like everyone else. I was in Ireland just to be in the moment and enjoy a new experience.

One day we took a small van with Seamus driving. Delightful amusing Seamus. It was about an hour's drive on winding roads through small villages....hardly villages...more like cross roads. The van parked at the end of the road where the cliffs meet the sea. The spot is called An Ben Buie. I stood for a matter of moments looking out over the sea and experienced a sensation that was thrilling, odd and a bit scary. I really could not put my finger on the sensations I was feeling. The next day in the studio, I started my drawings of people emerging from what I am not sure. But they were very amorphous, tall and thin like a Giacometti sculpture. That theme I pursued the entire time I was at Ballinglen Foundation. Now that I am home I am reproducing them in large scale on panels. I kept trying to think of a name for the series. Something about mankind, impermanence......

Last night driving home from a dinner I caught the tail end of of a woman's talk on The Moth. She was  talking about Thin Places in the world two of them being on the west coasts of Ireland and Scotland!! I have since read that 'thin places' are where the Celts thought Heaven and earth are the closest.....very little division between them. So that was the sensation that I felt standing on the cliffs of An Ben Buie.