Beach Scene (After Degas) III, Oil on paper, 8 x 9 ins. 2009

Beach Scene (After Degas) III, 2009-10, Oil on paper, 8 x 9 ins.

Figures on a beach (Study I) 2010, Acrylic on paper, 33 x 24 ins.

Figures on a beach, (Study I) 201o

Acrylic on paper, 33 x 24 ins.

Friday still - life 2000

                                           Friday Still-life, 2000, oil on paper, 10 x 14 ins.


From the studio archive
painted in Cork in 2000 - part of a series of still-life images
hope to show it in Sligo in November at Hamilton gallery.

This was inspired by visits to the English market in the city,
Queues of the faithful on Friday for sole
while earthbound souls swim free of nets.
Oysters clacking like castanettes; a waitress goes by with
a head on a silver platter.


Good Friday

The sky lowered -
backlit by towering rain.


Then it was heart plumet time;
tidal darkness at noon.


Later town was deserted,
a cross hanging in every window,


silver burnt like nails on the palms of children,
on the white host of the moon.

Solstice At Streedagh (work in progress)

Solstice at Streedagh

When the Summer Solstice halves the sun,

and changes the colour of the sky,

they come down from the dunes

at tidal ebb;

ashen feet naked on the hissing sands

of Streedagh beach.

Torchbearers, handmaidens of the kitchen midden,

necklaced in seashells;
seagull feathers matted in their seasalted hair.

Last remnants of the dauby earthen tribe,
exiled downriver from a fallow season;
they carry kindling for spears,
lunar touchstones, hard runes- palmed to a smoothness;
Taut pelts tattooed with maps of ocean crossings,
migratory flight patterns.

They hoard a nomadic folklore of seal lament,
great whalesong saga's.

Rain is their natural element,
their eyes flinty green from Icelandic storms.

In their dreamtime the sea gave birth to a pale moon,
Homunculus; embroyed in rockpools,
dawn stars were frosted in cauls of lichen;
constellated spirits, glazed to chrystal.

They named landfall and inlet,
undersea cathedrals mantled in seaweed.
They carved the keel of the great stoneboat,
beached on a sandbank.

Swimming in the stoned dance of high waves,
every rookery is their hearth,
every rocky enclave their lost realm.

Summer 2010

There is no empathy in Heaven

"There is no empathy in Heaven", - Jeremy Rickin

Brian McDonagh Artist Sligo

Brian McDonagh Artist Sligo

Erie Canal Exhibition Schedule

                                           Troy, Summer 2010  oil on canvas 20 x 24 ins
Erie Canal Exhibition Schedule

enclosed details of the Exhibition based on the erie canal I am included in -
Due to tour 3 venues in the US from November to December -2010