Wednesday, October 2, 2013

Over the hills . . .


Yesterday morning, close-packed marble size raindrops falling heavily on the roof-light above my bed brought me to another day of consciousness.  It seemed to be a day better suited to driving than exploring local lanes on foot but by mid-morning when we were ready to leave the house the rain had ceased and warm sunshine beat down from a large patch of blue sky.

Back in May, when we were staying near Skibbereen, Lisi and I met there artist Kathy Pentek and each of us left her with a commission; one painting for myself and several for Lisi.  Yesterday, dawning inclement, we chose to drive across the peninsular to pick up our commissions.  I had left Kathy with a more or less free hand, my only constraints on her imagination being that the painting should have something to do with my birth-sign; Capricorn.  Kathy’s painting delighted me.  I can but be amazed at how an artist, having spent no more than an hour or so with a total stranger, has managed to produce a painting which has created so much impact on my senses; in a way, I see in this painting a fractured mirror of myself.

The mid-morning sunshine did not endure.  In swirling mists under a heavy, grey, marbled sky, sharing the landscape and road with no more than downs of insouciant sheep, we drove over the gorgeously spectacular Healy Pass.  Concomitant with the heavy rain earlier in the morning was the gushing, streaming, seeping lattice of mesmerising waterfalls and rivulets flowing down and over steep hill and mountainsides.


The three hundred metre high Healy Pass is named after Tim Healy, an early governor of the Irish Free State.  Previously called ‘The Kerry Pass’ the road was built during the famine years of the nineteenth century by poor relief workers.





1 comment:

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