In those days (the early 60s), children weren't bombarded with child-oriented art and craft materials in the way they are now. I don't recall having paints, crayons or colouring pencils, so most of my drawing was done with a plain HB pencil. It was only when I started school, and then started attending art classes, that I began to use colour, and for a long time I wasn't in my comfort zone with paints.


Coming into my teens I briefly joined adult art classes with the late John Skelton, but we were working in oils. The materials were expensive and it was awkward to be constantly asking my parents for money to buy more.  On top of that, I was too scatterbrained or too lazy to look after my brushes and palette properly. I persisted with oils through my teens in spite of that. My parents did recognise that I had some skill, to be fair, and they didn't discourage it, except to say that it would never give me a living (and, to be honest, I am happy that I never had to depend on it).


However, the most formative influence on my painting came from the art classes which my school provided on Saturday mornings for the State exam curriculum. These were provided by the late W.G. Spencer, one of Ireland's foremost watercolourists at the time, and I attended them for four years and he taught me watercolour techniques (and pencil).


I was still more comfortable working in black and white, and began to produce pen-and-ink drawings that relied heavily on stippling (shading with dots). I still think some of these are good, but they were immensely time-consuming and, when I got my first permanent job and was still trying to write up my Ph.D. in botany, they became more of a burden. 


Marriage followed that, then a baby, and art took a back seat. I would occasionally produce works in watercolour or pencil, usually on requests or when we owed someone a special present. Watercolour and pencil were practical; I could set up my work anywhere and it took only a few minutes to tidy up. I didn't have time for live sketching, so I worked from my own photos, something I still do. But my maximum output was two or three in most years and some years went by without me producing anything at all.


Like many things, that changed with COVID. Doing my day job from home, and more or less confined there, I needed other outlets. I flirted with breadmaking, I started playing the piano again, I dusted down the manuscript of a novel I had completed a few years earlier and I went back to painting. I have had a lot of training in piano but I don't have any special talent there (more about that in another blog entry, perhaps). I did have some success with bread making, but I did not find an agent to represent me and my novel manuscript, despite much encouragement and assistance from several established authors. 


The first painting I produced was that of the street in Washington DC. I had taken the photo when I was there in 2012 and I had started painting it before, only to abandon it. This time I finished it (In the meantime, the place has changed beyond recognition, due to the construction of high rise buildings in what was the open space in the background).


I can't remember which painting I produced next. I was living in Nairobi, so I had lots of photos of wildlife to work from, as well as other subjects from past travels. However, I soon realised that there was no point in churning out work unless I was going to do something more with it than using it for presents or hanging it on the walls. That was when I decided to work towards an exhibition, so I went about painting more single-mindedly. As soon as I finished one painting I would start on the next. This pattern was interrupted when work travels resumed, and was further interrupted by my move back to Europe, but I intend to continue. Of course, by now I haven't worked in oils for decades, so watercolours were the obvious medium, given all the practical considerations. Now that I have accumulated a critical mass of paintings and am thinking about the exhibition in more concrete terms, I have taken advice and set up a website. My friend  and (much better and more established) fellow artist Fergal Flanagan gave me advice on how to go about it.


So here I am. I hope to use this blog to write more about my painting, about other painters that I like, and other things that interest me, including conservation, politics, music, literature, food, cinema, history, etc.