Stormy Weather Paintings from Kerry, Ireland
The beautiful Dingle Peninsula has many faces, many weathers and colours. Stormy wind, a recent visitor, is no stranger in these parts, battering, bashing and blustery, so powerful, driving, bitter and biting that it can take your breath away; your face may be lashed with intensely stinging sand or hailstones; you may battle to stand up, to move forward may require all your strength and determination. You may wish you’d stayed at home.
A close companion of the wind is the rain – also a frequent visitor. We see a lot of it in Ireland – seemingly interminable rain – bucketing, cutting, crashing, lashing rain. We also get ‘soft’ rain – exasperating, saturating, sprinkling, dribbling drizzle. We get so many different kinds of rain that the Irish language (Gaelic) has as many words for it as the Inuit people have for snow (about 50, I believe).
Shown here are some paintings I have created to express the extreme weather that is our familiar, though generally uninvited guest.