I posted this painting some months back but I thought I would run it up the flagpost again. It has been accepted for the 14th Annual Signal Open Exhibition over the first fortnight in August. The Signal Arts Centre was established in 1990 in Bray and provides workspace, classes and gallery for local artists. It is on Albert Avenue near the seafront and, as the name hints, right beside the railway line. Whoo whoo! I have had work there before and it is always great to be accepted. Whoo whoo, again. The Open Exhibition will feature around a hundred visual artworks. It runs from Tuesday the 4th to Sunday the 16th of August. Mine is an acrylic painting called Soho in the Rain. It shows a view of Shaftesbury Avenue in London from the top of a bus. There’ll be loads of great stuff there, so come and have a deco!
I have been slowing down of late on the art front. The pain thing. Slowing down on all fronts, truth be told. Still, I did squeeze out this spark, in the realm of friends and family. The best place to be. As before, the location is Frank Duff’s pub at the top end of Main Street, Bray. It’s last orders at the end of a great night out; drink and conversation flowing. You’ll catch me standing in the mirror. I suppose I could be singing The Parting Glass, although that’s a tad melancholy in the contecxt.
Songs of love and friendship have tumbled down to us since the time of Thomas Moore. And ever on into the future; here’s hoping. This night in Duff’s was recent, but takes me back to the days o the foreign telegram. So, I tunnel back to the early seventies and Mellow Candle’s only album Swaddling Songs. While the focal, and vocal, point of the group was the sparkling duo of Alison O’Donnell and Clodagh Simonds, this song was written by guitarist Dave Williams. The lyrics are cut from the same cloth though, and sung with gusto by the female leads. There’s a hint of winter and its globe of interior warmth in this verse, evoking that familiarity amongst friends and lovers caught in the moment.
Sell me heat-haze sell me rain sell me wet and dry
Bray’s Harbour Bar is a favourite watering hole, and I have posted on it before. Drinking Outside the Harbour Bar was painted in the bright sunshine of a summer’s evening. Here, we are huddled inside the original bar in early November. There’s a music session, with three hombres giving it yards. Ballads and folk in the bar, with rock off in the back lounge. I’m in the snug, in between, swaying from one to the other.
This was originally the Harbourmaster’s cottage when built in 1831. The harbour itself was only a small dock then, the full harbour arriving in the 1890s. The bar has been licensed since the 1860s or so. The O’Toole Bros ran the show until ten years ago when the Duggan family added it to their fleet. Throughout its century and a half, it has kept its traditional vibe; seafarin’, rough hewn, crammed with bric a brac and all the ancient, and tyro, mariners adrift on the sea of life. It’s cosy in winter, with the log fires lit and the mellow glow of lights in the timbered shadows. And the music starts to play.
Tonight, I might get loaded
On a bottle of wine, on a bottle of wine,
Gonna feel alright, gonna feel alright,
Yeah, I feel alright!
I Got Loaded is a song for the good times. Listen to Los Lobos howling. Spanish for ‘the wolves’, the band formed in East LA in the mid seventies. Their second album, How Will the Wolf Survive, appeared in 1984 and includes this track. It was written by Camille Bob, and was first released in 1965 by his band L’il Bob and the Lollipops.
The Dart has been taking commuters, daytrippers and various wanderers around the Bay for forty years. Dart is a clever acronym for Dublin Area Rapid Transit. It runs from Malahide or Howth in the north to Greystones in the south. The last two stops are outside of County Dublin. Reaching the Dargle River we are in County Wicklow. The town of Bray has been established here since the Norman invasion, building on earlier Gaelic settlements.
This view is taken from the window of a southbound Dart, about to cross the bridge over the Dargle. I am returning from Dublin city where it has been raining, but now the sun’s coming out and Bray rises steaming out of the gloom. The Sugarloaf Mountains appear on the horizon, and the land is marked by the tower of the Catholic Church of the Most Holy Redeemer, and the spire of Christchurch (CofI). Bray Daly Station is my stop. Opened in 1854, the line was quickly extended to Greystones and runs parallel to the seafront behind the hotels and houses lining the Esplanade which was newly established then.
This painting is acrylic on canvas and has been accepted by the Signal Open Art Exhibition of 2024. I am delighted to be chosen and looking forward to seeing all the other works on show. The exhibition runs from Tuesday 6th August until Sunday 18th August. Should be fun. Give it a dekko!
Every time it rains
You’re here in my head
Like the sun coming out
I just know that something good is going to happen
I don’t know when
But just saying it could even make it happen
Cloudbusting by Kate Bush is guaranteed to lift the heart, without reneging on past sadness. It is on her 1985 album Hounds of Love.
Last October we took a week away in Elviria, near Marbella in Spain. I haven’t posted since returning, but there is work in the pipeline. I am penning a series on Andalusia, the region in Spain that includes a few places I have been, Malaga, Grenada, Marbella and Ronda, and a few places I haven’t; Seville and Cadiz, yet. Meanwhile, I am wintering at home, as usual. This particular work is set close to home. The original photo was taken by a backseat passenger and focusses on the receding view of Bray as we head north on the N11 towards the M50. Being a rearview, we can’t see where we’re going but have an ever-shrinking view of where we’ve been. A bit like life, I supose.
To which end I spend my days
within the poetry of motorways
In this acrylic it’s late Autumn and near the end of a rainy evening. You may just about make out a flyover in the distance and beyond that the Small Sugarloaf, or Giltspur, is consumed in the glare of the setting sun. The banner across the top of the rear window advertises Mooney’s car dealership on the Long Mile Road in Walkinstown. Shades of my youth lie there. My old school Drimnagh Castle was on the Long Mile and a whole vortex of memories is carried on the winds thereabouts.
Where ghost musicians haunt roads and lanes
with harps that once and old refrains,
I recall that I used to go on the hop some afternoons and head out along the Long Mile towards the Naas Road. One companion then was Gerry Ryan. There was one occasion where we got as far as the Red Cow Inn (a small bar then, in the early seventies) slaked our thirst with a pint and headed back home. Gerry was a nippy winger and went on to play soccer for Bohemians over in Phibsboro. He would graduate to the top division of English soccer with Brighton and Hove Albion and of course was capped as an Irish international. He stayed in Brighton after retirement and ran a pub, the Witch Inn in Sussex. Gerry suffered poor health in recent years and returned home to D12. He died in October at the age of 68.
There are other shades there also, and I’ve written of them in other ways. A poem of my old hometown might fit within some blues refrain for our theme song. I’ve included a few quotes here. It’s called the Girl from Fox and Geese.
This has been a wet summer, even by Irish standards. It is a constant perspective here to view life through rain streaked glass; huddled in a cafe shopfront, looking out the kitchen window, scenery rushing through the windscreen of a car. I’ve painted Connemara driving through the rain and more recently, a sodden rush hour from the upstairs front seat of a bus on Amiens Street. The latter I took from a friend’s photo (thanks Paula Nolan!) but this one is all me own work. Taken through the windscreen of our car parked on Florence Road, Bray, looking up towards Main Street and the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer. We are dropping in to Florence Furniture and Antiques in the left foreground. A good antiques shop is a treasure chest of the past, and more. An alternative universe where it is possible to imagine each artefact a living thing, a receptacle for history and craft, and love, and much, much more; hopeful, awaiting its future in another setting. The stories they could tell. The building was previously an art shop, and a printworks before that.
Across the street is Hayes Butchers Shop, a long established family business and friendly with it. Stories and gossip are exchanged here in the old fashioned way. It’s where I get all the beef; if you catch my drift. The Church was established in 1843, funded by subscription including generous donations from Bray’s sizeable Protestant community. It was remodelled in the 1890s by WH Byrne who, around the same time, was supervising the reconstruction of Dublin City Markets on Sth Great George’s Street to the magnificent building we see today. The Holy Redeemer, however, looks very different now to the nineteenth century structure. The mid sixties saw the facade altered to a modernist gabled front with a new plain, soaring bell tower. Surprisingly, you will find the nineteenth century interior remains. The old within the new.
At the top of Main Street, just across from the Town Hall, is one of Bray’s finest pubs, Frank Duff’s. It’s my local, being closest to my house, exactly 1.3 km to be precise. That’s a fifteen minute walk, though longer returning.
The name bears no relation to the Frank Duff who founded the Legion of Mary and championed the destruction of Monto Town, Dublin’s red light district in the 1920s. The reference is to the Frank Duff who set up shop here with wife Sheila in the 1940s. Their son, Ken, inherited the business in the late seventies. When Ken died in 2017, his sister Madeleine, ran the business for four years. Covid effectively shut the pub down. As a food free zone it didn’t qualify for the restricted opening of other premises over the lockdown period. The Duggans, owners of several premises in Bray, including the Harbour Bar and the Martello, took over in 2021.
During the Duff years the pub ignored such unnecessary distractions as food, piped music and television. It was all for a few drinks and a chat. The ideal local, so. More eccentrically, the pub rejoiced in a cycling theme, from the time the Tour de France came to Bray in 1998.
Shay Elliott was the focus of commemoration for the Wicklow cycling fraternity. Elliott was born and raised in Crumlin, in Dublin 12, and was a cycling pioneer in Ireland. He was the first Irishman to particiate in the Tour, and in 1963 became the first English speaker to wear the Yellow Jersey of race leader, which he held over three stages. He returned to Ireland, and became involved in Bray Wheelers, coaching new talent in the sport. He died in May 1971, from shotgun wounds, and was buried at St Mochonog’s Church, Kilmacanogue, near Bray. A monument to him was erected in Glenmalure, just south of Glendalough. It is a glorious spot to contemplate Wicklow’s mountain scenery.
Refurbished for its reopening, the premises has been divided along traditional bar and lounge lines. Television made its first appearance at Duffs in the old style, dark wood bar, while the lounge kept to the ancient tradition of banning the haunted fishtank. I am more often found in the lounge, to the rear of the premises where there’s a fire and high stools.
That’s the setting for this acrylic. It captures a moment in time, as friends debate the finerpoints of music, art, philosophy and football. A modest amount of drink has been consumed, though more may follow. We sit at the high table, while other clients are arrayed on armchairs and couches, bathing in the glow of warm lamps and an open fire. I am looking towards Main Street, hoping to catch the eye of a friendly staff member, more than likely, and let my comrades solve the problems of the world.
You know the first time I traveled Out in the rain and snow In the rain and snow I didn’t have no payroll Not even no place to go
The Snow Tree
This is the first time I’ve put together an exhibition of my paintings. Although I have been painting and drawing for as long as I can remember, my visual art has been a bit sporadic over the years. Most of my energy has gone into commissioned work or illustrations for specific briefs and events.
Rainy Night in Ripley Hills
Over the last five years I have devoted more time in generating a coherent body of work, painting on canvas. This has culminated in the show, On the Road, currently at the Signal Arts Centre in Bray.
Approaching Fairyhill
There are twenty painting in all, around the loose theme implied by the title. It’s subtitled: a travelogue in pictures. All this means, is that as soon as I step outside my front door, I am on the road. Early paintings in this process were taken from walking home at night and feature streetscapes of Bray and its suburbs.
Driving Through Skye
Farther afield, I have used photographs through the windscreen of our car, driving the highways and byways around Dublin and Wicklow. Then there are the many places I have visited over the years. Vancouver, the snowy mountains of British Columbia, the city of Granada in Spain and the highlands of Scotland are included in my subject matter.
Road to Whistler
There are many ‘nocturnes’, nighttime paintings of cities and motorways. At other times, I am painting into the low winter sun. I like the stark contrasts created, those long, eerie shadows. At other times, it’s the rain, and that great feeling as countryside or town emerges from a heavy shower, the dark veil of cloud pulled aside for the glaring sun.
Crossing Morehampton Road
It’s exciting, isn’t it? Stepping out into the world, never stepping in the same river twice. And so it goes. I keep on painting, looking for new inspiration and challenges. Most of the paintings have appeared in these pages, with prose attached to set them in their context. Here I am reprising them again.
Snowy Night in Granada
The Signal show runs to the end of the month. Thanks to everyone there, they have been wonderful. And thanks for all the comments and encouragement from folks on wordpress and facebook and all my friends here, and far away.
Vancouver at Night
But I ain’t going down That long old lonesome road All by myself If I can’t carry you, baby Gonna carry somebody else
Canned Heat recorded On the Road Again in 1967, the summer of love (or the autumn thereof).
The walk from the Dargle River to Arklow on the Avoca is about 54k, taking in, near enough, the coastline of County Wicklow. After Arklow, there is a short stretch to Clogga Beach after which Kilmichael Point marks the border with Wexford. I haven’t done that yet, but it’s on my list.
All the way to Wicklow Town we kept to the coast, though after that access was restricted to select entry points. It’s been an epic in seventeen parts. The first seven were in Bray which certainly offers plenty, though we had barely covered a mile of our journey before embarking on the cliff walk to Greystones. That’s about a 7k stretch and you’d do it easily in ninety minutes. If you want to do it via Bray Head and Summit, it will take a bit longer with a climb to 240 metres. You can make it a loop walk or go station to station and take DART in one direction.
Greystones all the way to Wicklow is along the beach for a little over 20k. Detours to Newcastle and the East Coast Bird Sanctuary were taken. The Bird Sanctuary is a good outing of itself. Greystones to Newcastle is around 8k, and it’s another 13k to Wicklow.
Wicklow was good for a bit of exploration. South of the town you can navigate the headland by way of the Black Castle and join the Glen Beach Cliff Walk as far as the Lighthouses. Wicklow to Arklow is a distance of about 25k, but there’s no one coastal path. We drove it and dropped into Magheramore Beach and Brittas Bay, the latter a splendid walk end to end of about 5k. After Mizen Head, the road runs close to the sea for 12k all the way into Arklow.
And of course, what kept us going was the travellers tales, the myths and legends, and the songs playing in our heads. Much of the playlist is provided by local artists, some a bit further afield.
Double Cross, (Fintan Coughlan), Tired and Emotional/Mary Coughlan (1985)
Telstar, (Joe Meek) The Original Telstar – The Sounds of the Tornados/The Tornados (1962)
Bejabbers, I’ve had my first vaccine. Suddenly, things are looking up. The world, long empty, is again filling up with possibilities. Restrictions are being eased and in about a month al fresco drinking and dining will return. So, in case any of yiz have forgotten what that’s like, I’ve painted this scene outside the Harbour Bar from about two years back. It is after the Bray Air Show on a blazing summer’s day and tens of thousands of thirsty folk go looking for a pint. And what better place than Bray?
I am alone in a crowd and it is a very pleasant place to be. I hope I’ve conveyed the feeling of being inside the scene, as distinct from the remote artist observing from the outside. I’m thinking of those great group paintings of Auguste Renoir: the Luncheon of the Boating Party and the Moulin de la Galette. That was late nineteenth century Paris and Renoir and his mates were changing the way we look on life, love and art, and the whole damned thing. But people are the same all over, throughout space and time. After the plague year, the world will open again. I’m celebrating.
Simply, this is what people do and always have. This is what makes life fun. The painting is quite different from the more isolated feel I usually go for, and I’ve needed to adjust my technique to accommodate that. It’s in acrylics, as usual, but has more of a watercolour feel to it. I laid out the composition precisely, but went for a freer brushstroke to capture that atmosphere of movement and joy. I hope this works. Of course, nothing beats the real thing. Bring it on!
xxharrison 