Description

THE CLIFFS OF MOHER. COUNTY CLARE. IRELAND.

COMPLETED AUGUST 2018.

Special Limited Edition Hand Drawn Cartouche Print.

I hand draw the mermaid cartouche on each of these prints adding a unique artists touch.

Limited Edition of just 25. Each print also comes with a separate certificate of authenticity.
Postage:
Please allow an additional ten business days from purchase date as each print is hand colored on order.

There will be slight differences in each hand-drawn cartouche because the artist gets distracted by his cats 😉

This beautiful print of my brand-new painting of the world famous and legendary Cliffs of Moher, in County Clare, on the west coast of Ireland, is something special.
County Clare is my mother’s county and I often regard it as my own home county too so this work is not just a new painting but it has a depth that comes from the heart. Started in 2016 it was finally finished in August of this year, 2018.

As befits such an important work for such an iconic location I wanted to create a different type of print using some old techniques such as the addition of a hand-drawn pencil cartouche of the mythical Moher Mermaid and a use of gold inks to surround the edge of the full-color painting.

For the first time I have used a very special and expensive new paper, a natural matte white, heavy 315 gsm cotton rag paper, size A3 (11.69” x 16.54”), which captures the colours superbly and allows me to draw perfectly in pencil on the base -and sign it in gold too for good measure.
Yep, it’s a beauty and I love it myself.

PS. Every pencil drawn cartouche is an original artwork by my own hand, I do not use assistants.

The story behind the artwork

Hey everyone, since you guys are on my subscribers list it seemed only right that you all should be the very first to see this epic new artwork, ‘The Cliffs of Moher, County Clare, Ireland’. This has taken me so long to finish it merits a proper launch and first viewing.

Like a lot of my more recent work, it’s taken a good while to finish. I started this back in 2016 and have been adding to it every time I have had an opportunity to work on it. Like a lot of my art, the plan goes out the window very quickly. Once the drawing begins it takes on a life of its own and over time more and more elements are slowly added or excluded. Like all my Celtic work it is primarily a linear work.
When the preparatory pencil sketches are finished I move to inking which is probably the most time-consuming part of this entire exercise and one of the most enjoyable.

The insets are always to the front of my mind designing a work like this one and the question is always a simple one: what goes into them? Have I a mythological basis for any additions to what is already such a marvelous iconic landscape? In this case, I was very fortunate having County Clare roots.

My mom hailed from Kilmaely, County Clare, so this one is for her and her influence is clearly visible in the inset painting relating to the stories she and her very old aunt, my minder when I was a nipper, told me as I grew up.
This aunt was a fountain of knowledge of Irish history and family history and she told me so many stories when I was a kid, often scary as hell. Of course, everything is much more vivid and alive when we are young but the story of the rather vindictive but seductive Moher Mermaid always stayed with me -and I remembered too the tales of the legendary, ghostly white horse that appeared from time to time around the Hags Head. It was there that a British Army lookout tower, called Moher Tower, was built in 1780 to watch out for the expected French Revolutionary Army invasion fleet during the Napoleonic wars.
This tower was built on the site of an ancient, prehistoric promontory fort, not unlike Dún Aengusa or Dún Conor on the Aran islands and the loss to our history of this prehistoric fortress is probably incalculable as the stonework was used in the building of the lookout tower. I have searched hard for any visual representation of this ancient fortress but I have had no luck so far and all my research is based on local knowledge, legend and real history.
Today the beautiful cliffs are a huge tourist attraction and deservedly so, they are magnificent and imposing as the Grand Canyon and on a dark rainy day, they have a sinister magic all their own.

These great cliffs run for over 14 kilometres and rise nearly 120 metres (400 feet) above the ocean, reaching their maximum height of 214 metres (700 feet) just north of O’Brien’s Tower, a stone round tower built in 1835 by Sir Con O’Brien of the royal O’Brien line of Ireland dating back to the time of Brian Boru, the greatest High King of Ireland.