Art Vs Artist 2024

The Navigator Revisiting Manannán mac Lir in his youth, before the famous self-navigating boat was fully automated + the good old Early Irish practice of putting severed heads to household use

What the Tuatha Dé Danann could have seen when someone finally cried 'Land ahead!'

Today’s Inktober prompt is ‘Passport’. I drew a Russian passport (as a person who has one) to remind everyone that Russia is a terrorist state as well as a dictatorship waging civil war against its own citizens, and to honour pro-Ukraine, anti-Putin resistance within Russia.

Tonaroasty (Tóin an Róistigh, something along the lines of 'The bottom end of de Roche lands') is a medieval ghost village in Co. Galway I accidentally came across when out to shoot a stone circle on a barrow (I did take photos of it too). Judging from the onomastics (and from the satellite photos clearly showing rectangular foundations and what seems to be a cross-shaped church) it was an Anglo-Norman settlement, so built no later than 12th c. This also gives us a clue about how and why it ended. When the Black Death reached Ireland, the Gaels were in a more advantageous position than the Normans as they lived in less crowded conditions and did not have any religious prejudice about cats (hence, less rats and less fleas carrying plague). The Norman settlers were traditionally living in a more compact way, were in frequent contact with people from crowded castles, and the relationship between cats and folk Christianity soon turned to be rocky at best (to put it very mildly). Therefore, the plague was feasting on them at will, and it was one of the factors that contributed to the subsequent Gaelicisation of the surviving Anglo-Norman nobility. The plague hypothesis also explains quite neatly why the site has not been used for settlement again ever since.

The Wren Prince VIII - The Transformation

'Finally, I have found you'

The Wren Prince VI - The Battle of Birds

Green and grey on St. Patrick's Day.

Hands studies

Craughwell, Co. Galway