Hi everyone! As winter draws in I may be spending a bit more time here on the blog. As ever my motto about social media is that it's better for the brain to be a creator than to be a consumer. Now that Twitter has fallen you will find me on Bluesky and on Instagram I’m on the early train to Dublin sitting opposite . . .
This we have now……but are we already in the decline?
This we have now is not imagination. This is not grief or joy. Nor a judging state, or an elation, or sadness. Those come and go. This is the presence that doesn't. Rumi It's not that I didn't already know. I had been aware of the decline in wild things for the last few years. But the news this week that our insect . . .
Rural life; it’s not all birds and bunnies
Living as a rural artist is challenging. Out here in County Waterford, we have to make our own fun as they used to say. We make everything up from scratch. Since leaving Framework the organisation I co-founded in 1994, I have had to review living out here in the middle of nowhere. Of course it's not the middle of nowhere if you are a . . .
Still lucky enough to find tiny treasures underfoot
O I could gush! Spring has arrived and underfoot things are hotting up. Although these wild couple of acres give fantastic cover to all sorts of small animals, every field outside of these boundaries is now preserved for a local a gun club. The guns are a worry for a wandering photographer like myself. Another reason to avoid . . .
How an exhibition creates connections
It's been a while, my friends. To be honest I have been quite overwhelmed by the preparation, building and opening of the exhibition. When people ask me if I'm delighted by how successful it has been? Honest to my dying breath, I have to partially disappoint by whinging about how damn hard it all was!! I can laugh at myself to some . . .
Sneak peek behind the scenes of my exhibition
To say I'm freaking out would be a slight exaggeration. Let's just say the reality is sinking in..... Back in the Spring the idea of an exhibition seemed like a good idea at the time. My self and Kate Quinn would work on it together and we thought we could throw the whole thing together in a couple of months. . . .
The Copper Coast of County Waterford
Annestown, Knockane, Benvoy, Boatstrand, Kilmurrin, Bonmahon, Tra na mBó, Ballydowane, this was my journey today. I've been thinking about starting a section on this blog to highlight some of the places I know and love. What do you think? I get asked a lot about the best places to visit and besides the obvious and the . . .
Putting a fire under creativity
"Firstly to cook for the Baba Yaga, (the forest witch) one lays a fire- a woman must be willing to burn hot, burn with passion, burn with words, with ideas, with desire for whatever it is she truly loves. It is actually this passion that causes the cooking, and a woman's original ideas of substance are what is cooked. To cook for the . . .
The land of the free?
Dinner was to be at 7 but it was now late. I was staying in a small Bed and Breakfast on Inis Meáin, one of the Aran Islands. Guests were chatting and opening bottles of wine when our hostess came out of the kitchen almost in tears. Earlier in the day her husband had been helicoptered to hospital with a broken leg and she was simply overwhelmed . . .
Using your voice
Last year the Editor of the News and Star invited me to write a guest column for this paper. She found me, because I blog away quietly every week on a site called Foxglove Lane (foxglovelane.com) As what she was asking seemed to be a one-off adventure, I wrote about some of my passions; creativity, imagination and happiness. Within a . . .
