Description

The pictures above are designed to highlight the gold plough. Also shown are the ‘Starry Plough’ banner and my original James Connolly artwork.

JAMES CONNOLLY. SPECIAL EDITION COMMEMORATIVE PRINT.
Signed, numbered and limited edition of only 16, enhanced with gold and silver by the hand of the artist, not an assistant. Size is A3 16″ x 11″.  This work is based on my own original artwork of James Connolly which was is part of a larger Irish Revolutionaries print collection.

My admiration for James Connolly has lasted a lifetime and I thought I should do a special one-off series of hand-enhanced prints to incorporate the famous ‘Plough and the Stars’ flag of Connolly’s Irish Citizen Army which fought so bravely against the might of the British Empire and inspired future generations to stand against oppression, then and now.

THE PLOUGH AND THE STARS.
The ‘Plough and the Stars’ flag was flown during the 1916 Easter Rising by James Connolly’s Irish Citizen Army rebels over the hated Imperial hotel which was owned by William Martin Murphy the notorious owner of the Irish Independent newspaper who opposed the workers during the Dublin Lockout of 1913 and called for the execution of the leaders of the 1916 Rising.
The flag was designed by George William Russell for the Irish Citizen army and has always been my own favourite of the flags of the Easter Rising and is still used by many leftist and socialist groups who try to follow the ideals of James Connolly.
PS. I deliberately followed the Russell design despite my inclination to correctly redraw the actual stars but the idiosyncratic star motifs are part of it’s originality and charm so I left them as they were.

WIKI:
The Starry Plough banner (Irish: An Camchéachta) was originally used by the Irish Citizen Army, a socialist Irish republican movement. James Connolly, co-founder of the Irish Citizen Army with Jack White, said the significance of the banner was that a free Ireland would control its own destiny from the plough to the stars.[2]
The flag depicts an asterism (an identified part) of the constellation Ursa Major, called The Plough (or “Starry Plough”) in Ireland and Britain, the Big Dipper in North America, and various other names worldwide. Two of the Plough’s seven stars align (point) on the North Pole Star.
The original Starry Plough was unveiled in 1914 and flown over the Imperial Hotel by the Irish Citizen Army during the 1916 Easter Rising. Throughout the year the Plough prominently features in the night sky over the Northern Hemisphere. The 1916 flag is on display at the National Museum, Collins Barracks, in Dublin.[3]
While similar to the state flag of Alaska, it predates Alaska’s by more than a decade.