The Making of the Ireland Series

Collecting colors in Ireland was a dream. I expected to see mostly the bright blue and green from photographs but was pleasantly surprised by a whole rainbow of colors and shades. Even more surprising, there were way more types of landscapes than I expected: pebbled beaches, cliffs, rolling hills, desert areas. Each day felt like an entirely different place.

Billy and I wanted to see as much of the island as possible in our 9 day trip so we did a LOT of driving. Some of my favorite photos from the trip came from driving when I would yell "PULL OVER" to Billy (he did all of the driving, my hands were sweaty just thinking about driving on the lefthand side) and we would stop the car and get out somewhere with nothing but hills and sheep for miles. We took some obscure roads thanks to google maps "shortest route" that seemed only to be traveled by the occasional farmer. Here is the route we took:

After we got home, I started working out my ideas on a smaller scale in what I call "studies". I use this low-pressure setting to experiment with colors and composition. I then use my favorite studies to inform the larger, full size paintings.

Studies are available for sale and I loved framing them this time around. The frames are painted to match a color within the painting, and mimic the final painting colored border idea.

After narrowing down which studies I wanted to create into a full-sized piece, and the daunting task of deciding on which sizes to use, I ordered my supplies and waited (the hardest part)

I am always GIDDY once the panels get delivered and primed

This series of paintings took longer than usual because one week after returning home from Ireland we picked up our puppy, Lillie (otherwise known as Lilibet, Lilibeth, Betty and shithead). She's been popping up in a lot of my photos from the making of the series, growing up a lil bit between each one.