Victoria Morris Ekelund Studio: Irish Fishing Boats

Friday, March 18, 2016

Irish Fishing Boats - Howth

Howth Harbor, 16x12, oil on linen panel

As seems to be my modus operandi these days, a bunch of paintings I have been working on were wrapped up this past weekend after a month of nothing to report. So many are 'in progress.' This little guy started out last August at a workshop I attended as a study for a bigger painting. I did a very simple block in to see if how the shapes would work. I have not gotten to a larger version since then so I opted instead to finish the block in. It was a lot of detail for such a small work in my mind, so I had to do work on it in bite size pieces. I started first to correct the drawing, which was not off by much, thankfully. I then started from the top and worked my way down. It took about a month of working in stages to finish it not being in any kind of hurry and enjoying the leisurely pace.

I liked this image for the composition and for the repetitive shapes and colors. The reds and oranges move you through the painting and the gray brown harbor walls frames it nicely keeping the eye moving.

Howth is out on a spit of land that juts out north of Dublin called Howth Head. The train took about a half hour to get there from the city. We had a lovely lunch on the harbor listening to the sea gulls and watching the boats coming and going. Howth has a large hillside which we walked up and found a wonderful view of the harbor from a church ruin. The clouds had rolled in by then and as you can see below, gave a very moody image with the church and the bare trees. It was two years ago I was there this month. Howth has a great hiking trail that runs around the hill the abbey is on which gives you views of the Irish Sea. FYI, we did not see many tourists, yet I found the town very picturesque. It was a bright but overcast day and we were blessed with a rainbow as we took the train back to Dublin early that evening.