Dear Artist, Do you remember “Mary, Mary, quite contrary?” This children’s nursery rhyme represents an archetype of human behavior. A contrarian is a person who bets on the opposite of the conventional wisdom. We really ought to be doing one…
Dear Artist, Early in my career I came to know an artist by the name of Lawren Harris. On one of our walks together he told me that he thought paintings came out of themselves. He explained that the painting…
Dear Artist, In “Fahy’s Pub and Undertakers” in Dingle Town, with a background of smoke and mirrors and Bob Dylan recordings, I’m lifting a Guinness with Seamus O’Mahoney. He’s a retired art teacher, now a “water-dabbler,” who has bicycled out…
Dear Artist, From my journal: “Socked in for three days. Most of the time can’t even see the Blasket Islands. Trying to coax BTU’s out of peat-stove. Can’t heat these Irish cottages — you sit in the fire. The walls…
Dear Artist, Distant sheep are moving down a green hillside like a spill of cream. The light between the shifting clouds travels over the patchwork quilt in counterpoint to the sheep. A few minutes ago an aged Irishman, his face…
Dear Artist, Right now I’m looking toward Omey — a small island viewed from an unimportant place called Claddagduff on the Connemara shore. In the foreground, designer rocks step down toward the weedy tide. Beyond, in patchwork fields, whitewashed houses…
Dear Artist, It’s a small island — eleven acres — centered in Tully Lake, Connemara, County Galway. The writer Oliver Gogarty lived here from 1923 till 1939. Gogarty rowed his dory on the lake and trawled without a hook in…
Dear Artist, Her name is indeed Colleen, her friend is Emmet; a horse of a dog not much given to saying anything, which is unusual for the Irish, but he is at least fluent in drool. Colleen and I are…