Nicki Heenan painting in my field overlooking Fodra and Ross bays.  It has taken a while to settle into my new home and area. I have been very happy so far, but have been struggling to find a purpose for my being here. Whilst it is wonderful to live in an area of such outstanding beauty with incredible views, I have had a growing feeling that I need to share it.  Having an Open Studio every few weeks and doing AirBnb helps . .  but!    My house and studio.  I met Nicki Heenan last year when she was doing a residency in the Burren. We had been friends on Facebook for a while, but it was so good to actually meet her. Nicki does a residency in Ballinglen, Mayo in Ireland every year as well as exhibiting regularly in Ireland, so I asked if she would like to stay with me for a few days on her way up the coast and throw some ideas around. We both managed to find dates that matched and she arrived this week.  Nicki mixing her pain...

Gorgeous newspaper faux chenille  It takes a lot to winkle me out of my life on the edge of the world. I thought long and hard about leaving for a few days to teach in Inverness, but thought it might be fun so I put Poppy into my wonderful dog minders and off I tootled. I'm SO glad I did. The C.A.T. group have been meeting for many years and because of this they are a fabulous group to work with. They are an absolute joy. Great fun but they also work hard.     The group working away on the first morning painting up their Bondaweb. The 2 day workshop we decided on was a combination of A New Starting Point and Newspaper Faux Chenille. They wanted to have some fun, not worry what anything looked like. This took the pressure off and the group enjoyed playing and going with the process.    Starting lay up the 'backgrounds' and 'prettys'.  A New Starting Point involves working with painted newspapers, old maps, books . . . The proc...

   A section across 3 Journey exercises. It's been a while . . Life can sometimes come along and swoop you away! The studio at home in Ireland is almost finished and will be ready to teach in when my courses start.   The back wall of the studio Left hand side . .  View from the door - as you can see, plenty of room for  tables and chairs for teaching my workshops. There has been a slight delay in opening the studio as we had a big storm here last night and I now have a hole in the roof!! That should be sorted this week. I am very excited to have somewhere to create larger work. I have 2 local exhibitions coming up and would like to make something new and exciting. *** A new online workshop.  My design exercise The Journey has been the most popular workshop I have taught and it is now available online. I have been asked so often to offer it online for those of you who cant get to a workshop with me. It was pa...

 A section of one of the Journeys half way through.  Right - now where was I??? The Journey in Jaipur . . . It might seem rather a long way to travel to do a design exercise, But I am sure you can imagine the incredible inspiration that we were surrounded by, before we even left the hotel! Your head just spins with all the shapes,lines and forms.  A beautiful lock on a door at the Amer Fort Palace.  Part of a fence in the paper factory we visited. One of the many stunning domed buildings in the Maharani's Garden in Jaipur. If you look back trough the last 2 posts you will some of the inspiration for these Journey exercises.  We painted the first part of the Journeys in a local workshop that had plenty of space for the long pieces of paper we needed. It was cool and not too bright in the workshop, great for relaxing and concentrating on the designs.      The group getting on with creating their Journeys. ...