Johnogradyart-The-Coast-Road
The Coastal Road ©John O’Grady
7″ x 9″ x 0.75″ oil on canvas, ready to hang.
$227 (approx €202, £171) with free shipping.

The Wild Atlantic Way is a road that hugs the west coast of Ireland stretching 1400 km from Donegal in the north west to Co Cork in the south.

The term ‘Wild Atlantic Way’ sounds like a bit of marketing and it is. It’s a recent innovation that aptly describes the landscape and seascape, in all its rugged and elemental splendour.

This painting brought up memories of a visit to Achill Island in Co Mayo where Paul Henry made many of his landscapes.

Immersed in the energy and vitality of the coast, you turn a bend or reach the top of a headland and there, in front of you, a new vista opens up, stunning, in turn revealing a calm sea sprinkled with silver lights and next an angry ocean swirling and crashing against the land.

It’s a dynamic place, surprising, spectacular.

On that day, rain clouds were rising over distant headlands like mighty sculptures dwarfing the land below.

While touring the island, the weather was fine to start with and fairly quickly turned from fine rain to mist to downpour and back to a bright autumnal day.

Each change was captivating.

This painting is my recollection of a moment during that visit. I also realised I am unconsciously exploring variations on a theme: I created a similar, albeit larger, painting last July called Spirit of Water III.

John O Grady Art-The Spirit-of-Water-III

In that post I mention how the painting might have been an antidote to last summer’s 40°C. At the moment, it’s in the mid 30s here so perhaps these things surface involuntarily.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the painting.