Here’s a photo of where I paint. That loading door up there is my loft, as is the window on either side of it.

I’ll post photos of inside, and also of the surrounding yard and woods, another time.

(click to enlarge)

Update: Have a first look at inside my studio

Check out my paintings on sale - which I can now get around to adding into since I’ve implemented a short-term fix to the whitescreening of my blog.

More About My Paintings:
   • My Favourite Paintings
   • So I Painted It
   • Things I Paint the Most
   • Things People Say (When They See You Painting)

Read: The Studio From Outside »

There are some problems of late here on IrishKC. The site has all but disappeared at times, sometimes for many hours. When this happens visitors get to see nothing but a blank white screen.

[ You can still see my Irish Paintings Sale just fine ]

Moves are being made to prevent this recurring in the long-term, but that in itself will take a bit of time so it’s possible that more white screen times could occur before then. I’ll continue to work to see if an immediate fix can be implemented as well as working on the long-term fix.

It did mean that promised updates to the Paintings for sale page, and to Kansas City Irish events did not occur. They will though - as soon as I can.

It’s going to be a long Christmas - but then it’s been a very long 2008.

Read: Ahem »

Here’s a photo I took of a blackbird a couple of days ago.

Since I moved into my studio we’ve been in a cold spell so usually for lunch I just put down the paintbrushes, pick up the sandwiches, and make another pot of tea.

A couple of days ago however, I went out for a walk in the woods with my new camera. While the Robin was strangely uncooperative, this Blackbird was happy to wait for me, and when I asked her she turned her head sideways.

(click to enlarge)

For Americans who may be wondering: the male Blackbird is all black (save for the bill and an eye-ring) but we don’t have the Red-winged Blackbird in Ireland. Our Blackbirds are also not of the flocking kind, and are quite defensive of their breeding territory.

See Also:
   • Nobody’s Child #39
   • Signs From The Gods #2
   • Long-tailed Tits
   • Missouri Monarch
   • American Robins Vs European Robins

Read: Blackbird »

Build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up.

Build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up.

Build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, build-up, blink, Christmased-Out.

You Can Read More Along These Lines:
   • Turkeyed Out
   • Fun
   • Merry Christmas
   • Midnight on New Year’s Eve
   • ‘Tis the Season to Burn a Goat

Read: Missing Christmas in America »

If you’re wondering about the new paintings I said I would add into my current Irish Painting Sale, they are definitely on the way.

The plan is that as they are ready I will just slot them into the existing paintings page but not announce them here on IrishKC until there’s a few of them.

I will however announce them individually on Twitter as they’re ready, so if you want to be alerted as soon as possible - following me on Twitter is the way to go. You would be joing the other cool 340 people.

At this stage I can’t say for definite what those paintings will be, but they might be of Westport, Waterford, Ballina, Doolin, Listowel, West Cork, Connemara, Donegal, and Dublin. And they might not.

Read: More Paintings Coming »

As Ireland enters its 3rd day without pork (if you were good and threw away all the sausages, rashers and the Christmas ham like you were supposed to - hands up who designated them “thrown away” but held on pending an announcement?) here are some highlights of the blogging scene in Ireland this chilly December.

And when I say December I probably mean November as well. And October for good measure.

I’m doing this because I feel guilty for not blogging as I dived into the self-absorption that is my sale of paintings.

1. First and foremost, Homepages - Tales from the Irish Blogosphere has been published. Organized by BackPedalBrakes, the book was compiled at a time when I was suffering from the fallout of the loss of the cottage - perfect thematically to inspire me to submit a piece for consideration for the book, but not so perfect from a practical point of view. It’s a highly impressive list of contributors, and it’s for a cause that is only good. Buy it.

2. Sweary is back. The Swearing Lady is once again holding court from The Arse End of Ireland. And to judge by the length of her paragraphs it’s like she really has been away from computer screens all this time. While she was away we lost Bertie, Twenty Major, and well loads of things to be honest. Some people even lost wealth.

3. Annie is also back. Not that she went away from blogging - she just went away. To a place called America. If you haven’t read the journey you should follow it from here on Oct 13. Seemingly there was some election or other on when she was over there. There’s even a handy map for you to see at glance where she did damage.

4. The first Irish circumnavigation of the globe by bicycle is being blogged. People have told me that I have cycled around the world - but there are more than 2 rings on the Oylmpic flag so I’m kinda jealous. And I would have loved some of today’s technology to have been around back when I was taller and thinner. The boys are on Twitter too.

5. The Thursday guest posts on Peter’s Donegan Landscaping Blog are turning into one of the best series of blogposts out there. The posts by Pixie Von Dust and DebbieMet are standout pieces but there’s excellent stuff there too by Bohoe, Damien, Rick and Adrian - with another 4 to come.

6. It’s 2 months since I first read it, but Gimme’s post on Carlton and Chester still resonates. It reads like a short film.

7. Once upon a time he asked for lots of comments. And he deserved them, but as if granted by a Monkey’s Paw, Declan got them on this post. You know the way I hate cars (you don’t, but I really do) and yet can find Car Talk very entertaining, or even TopGear for that matter? Well I don’t read crime novels (unless I think about it and list the exceptions) yet I love reading Declan’s blog and it’s all about crime fiction.

8. Christmas is coming. GingerPixel and a cat tweet, if you know what I mean.

9. Christmas is really coming. There’s a fair few Irish bloggers in here. Courtesy of Walter, you can put yourself in there too. I’m waiting until Christmas Eve.

Read: The Irish Blogging Scene »

Later than promised I have finally made available some Irish paintings on SALE.

There’s 82 paintings (SOLD: 36). The main part for me isn’t the newer small stuff, but the older larger abstracts that ideally I’d prefer not to sell.

Here are some notes about this December 2008 sale:

1. Shipping is free worldwide

2. I will be adding from 10 to 20 new pieces into this sale over the next couple of weeks.

3. This sale will last for 2 weeks, or maybe a bit longer.

4. I say “Irish Paintings” but you’ll see other countries in there too. And a lot of abstract stuff devoid of nationality.

5. Rather than a cohesive collection of new work, this sale is born of desperation and is composed of new and old.

6. PayPal links are on every paintings page so you can use a credit card, but if you know me and can get money to me directly I’d be happy not to pay fees.

7. Paintings are priced in USD even though I am based in Dublin. Prices range from $25 to $95 - at today’s rates that’s 20-75 euros.

8. If you want something in time for Christmas and you live far away from Ireland - you’ll want to act very fast (and then so will I).

9. If you live in or visit Dublin, we can possibly arrange a handover ignoring those Post Office people.

10. There is no stock control function built into the PayPal links so when something is purchased I have to manually mark it so to prevent duplicate selling. In the event I’m too slow (it’s happened twice before) then it’s a case of first come first served.

11. Last time I had a sale like this I was very slow in shipping some pieces. That won’t happen this time because now I have a studio - then I was living out of a suitcase with no space and all my materials in storage.

12. PayPal isn’t perfect. Lately they’ve been rejecting several valid credit cards of mine and people known to me. If you have problems give me a shout.

13. I intend this to be the last sale of older stuff. Now that I’m finally in a studio future sales should be of new work. To that end I’m more excited about 2009 than I am about this sale.

14. If nothing in this is for you for whatever reason, you could still help me a lot by letting people know about it. Email, blog, tweet, or that old-fashioned word of mouth lark.

15. Most if not all paintings are depicted without a signature. Either I have yet to sign a work or I have obscured the signature online. Any purchased paintings will be signed. The Minis will be signed on the back.

16. If you’re nervous about buying a painting you’ve only seen on a screen - I don’t blame you. Colours differ, and 2 inch paintings look the same size as 40inch paintings. All I can say is that, although it regularly surprises me, people who have bought paintings from me tell me they found the paintings to be better than they expected. It could just be that I take lousy photos.

17. There are no paintings in this sale that come from my recent Donegal misadventure. There will be paintings from that experience in the future though.

Anyway, I hope you get some enjoyment from looking at my Irish paintings on SALE.

Read: Notes About the Sale of Paintings »

UPDATE: Oh look there it is. I’ll do up an announcement with explanatory defensive notes in a few minutes, but for now I have some Paintings for Sale.

It’s 2am Irish Time and I’m in my studio.

If you’re a fan of numbers I can tell you it’s 4 degrees in here (Celsius = 39 F). If you’re not a fan of numbers I can tell you anything.

I’m painting until 6am, then I’m going to photograph whatever is complete and code the pages to display those paintings.

All going well I’m guessing I’ll have something to shout about around lunchtime in Ireland (1pm = 7am KC Time).

If you know me you’ll know things rarely go well. But even if things aren’t going to plan I promise I will down brushes at 6 and not pick them up again until I’ve posted the sale.

Further updates will be, as ever, on Twitter

UPDATE (Fri 10:45am Irish Time): That was a long night. Cold, but fruitful. There are about 70 pieces going into the sale. I say about because I haven’t decided yet about a couple of older pieces.

However, my camera is playing up. It’s bending images. I can scan the minis and smaller paintings (and probably will) but for most paintings I need a camera. So I’m off to buy one.

And that’s the end of Black Friday I guess. Cyber Monday it will be so. Sorry. Below is one of only 2 usable photos I managed to get:

Elevator Island
18×24 inches
canvas

Rather than trip myself up with another detailed plan, I’ll just point again towards Twitter where the ongoing updates should give a sense of the timing of the sale.

Read: Status »

For those who care about post going from the Republic of Ireland to anywhere in the world, including to the Republic of Ireland, in time for Christmas, the following are the dates published by An Post as the last posting dates this year.

The parcels dates are the most significant here because any paintings I might sell would ship as parcels. I think any mini-paintings would qualify as letters - depending on how I package them.

There’s also a Courier service, but that’s just being silly.

All dates are in December 2008.

I’m posting this so I can refer to it from the forthcoming Art Sale.

Read: Last Posting Dates For Christmas »

Presently I’m in the final stages of putting together another big sale of paintings. Like the last sale the plan is to offer paintings at fairly cheap prices. I’ve also decided again to go with free shipping worldwide.

[ UPDATE: The Sale of My Paintings is now here ]

Prices will be in US dollars and very similar to the last sale, i.e. $75 for works of paper that are 16″x20″, $85 for works on canvas and panel 12″x16″, with smaller works for $35, $45, and $55, some minis for $25, and then the larger ones for, well I haven’t decided yet.

I can’t tell you what paintings will be available, because so many are very close to completion but only the next 24 hours will tell me what makes it in and what doesn’t. At the moment I’m looking at scenes of Ireland, America, and elsewhere. The largest paintings are abstract ones I did some years ago and have never made available to the public before.

Those that were unsold from the last sale I’ll probably include again, and maybe reduce them in price even more.

I’ve been talking of launching on Nov 25-ish. The one thing “Nov 25-ish” definitely means is not Nov 25 itself. Because tomorrow morning I will down paintbrushes and then assemble the web pages necessary. That’ll take a fair few hours.

UPDATE: I have a door sized window on my studio that blew out recently in a crazy night of wind. Painting in the studio is currently like painting outdoors - as low as 3 degrees (Celsius = 37F) and that’s slow. [ Sale started on Thursday Dec 4 ].
Sorry. I intend to run the sale for 2 weeks. I might even add more paintings into the sale over the 2 weeks.

Because I now have a studio I will be much quicker at packing and shipping any paintings that might be sold, than I was when I was living out of a suitcase back in Spring. The Irish postal service has December 8th as its final date for sending parcels to the US. I’ve tried to time this sale to allow time for me to meet that date should that be a concern of anybody.

Back to the brushes.

More on My Paintings:
   • Earlier Paintings on Sale - Mostly Irish
   • My Favourite Paintings
   • So I Painted It
   • Things I Paint the Most
   • Things People Say (When They See You Painting).

Read: Art Sale a Coming »

Arizona

Part 71 of the Cycle-Across-America series. (Read from the start in Boston or see the full index)

Deep in the mountains and deserts of the southwest, it’s the day I cycle into the 24th state of the trip and say goodbye to New Mexico.

These excerpts are from the audio-taped sections of the journal, but I’m just posting shorter than usual extracts here now, so it should be more readable.

Once I went south, back to the junction where I’d joined the day before, I found myself on US 70 and I’m going across a desert.

A straight road for 28 miles. The view was amazing mountains all around. I was trying to work out which of the peaks were in Arizona, and which were in New Mexico.

The vegetation was a lot of cacti at first, the ones where the limbs are made of joined-up plates, circles all joined together. I saw another hawk on a yucca, quite close. Yuccas are very tall. There’s tons of them. At one stage it was almost like a forest of yuccas.

I got a few waves, and then there was one great moment. A truck coming the opposite direction - there was very little traffic here and there was a nice wide shoulder - but a truck coming towards me was waving at me, I thought, and I waved back. Then I realised he wasn’t waving at me, he was pointing.

He was pointing over to his left. And I wondered was he telling me to get over to the edge of the road, when I’m already on the shoulder? He’s hardly pointing at the view; it’s fabulous but it’s fabulous all around, and you can’t miss it. Mountains everywhere. So I looked a bit closer and then I saw what he was pointing at.

[The rest of this post, is continued below the fold]

Read: Cycling Across America #71 »