Dear [[contact.first_name]],

I hope you had a good start to the year.

Last year felt very, very long. I feel much older, not really any the wiser and extremely lucky.

I'm grateful for the people in my life, funny, silly, supportive and kind.

Here is your art hug.

I'm sure most of you have visited Dublin at some point and the presence of the two towers in the bay as you fly in are hard to miss.

My father Tom was raised not far from where they stand and I always wanted to paint them and capture the warmth and familiarity of his childhood landmarks.

They are the Poolbeg Towers and the Bull Wall wooden bridge as seen from Sandymount strand. The ‘two chimneys’ as many Irish people would know them as, at just over 207 metres tall, are visible over much of Dublin and some of the tallest structures in Ireland.

It was lovely to paint this and I dragged it out as long as I could because it brought back so many memories and daydreams of my mother and father when they were young and of our larger extended family, all born and raised in or around Dublin city.

Below you can see the different stages of my process to create the painting 1-6:

A sped up video of me painting the wooden bridge, slowly but surely!

Not wanting to give up the towers just yet I pulled out a preparatory painting I'd made for the larger Poolbeg painting. I converted it to a digital file and repainted it using editing software on my computer as my new medium, like paint, but not on canvas. I created two new artworks of the towers, the 'tower sisters', that I will make available as open edition prints for those of you who might appreciate a more alternative visual interpretation of the chimneys, with a flavor of Berlin thrown in, cheap but sexy.

I gave a nod to art history and the cave artists of the Lascaux caves for my application to KnownOrigin and Future Art in Sydney Australia, a diverse community of people experimenting with and exploring new methods of creating, selling and celebrating art.

Cave Rave NFT artwork with digital signature exclusively at KnownOrigin

I miss my father and the peninsula. This painting captures the mood inspired by the place I retreat to most often even when I am feeling the most remote from it.

All my original paintings on paper will now be framed and arrive ready for you to hang on the wall.