Irish mythology, megaliths and ancient sacred sites in watercolour

Reaching back through Irish mythology and legend, I feel the pull of the megalith builders and their desire to inform us of their knowledge of, and respect for, Nature and the Elements.
I have had a great interest for many years in megaliths and ancient sacred sites, particularly in Ireland. They hold a universal appeal and their symbolism is very powerful. As a watercolourist, I find this medium very well suited to expressing the spirit of these magical places, as the water moves in ways that cannot always be controlled, thus allowing for that element, the unknown, to appear.

We can never understand exactly why they were erected, and for what purpose. That is part of their fascination for us.We do know certainly, that their builders had an advanced knowledge of astronomy. We moderns can only pay homage to the ancients as we struggle to interpret their mighty work which has lasted through thousands of years. And so for the artist it is an incredible channel, a means of connecting with our long distant past, and with our ancestors

"we stand and marvel at these ancient sites and this is how it should be because these unlikely masses of stone, heaved, levered and shoved into place - these temples of stone are testaments to our ancestors quest for knowledge and to their ability to change the world"
- Carleton Jones ’Temples of Stone, Exploring the Megalithic tombs of Ireland’

The great Alignment of Eightercua, near Waterville, marks the reputed burial place of Sceine, the wife of Amerghin, the warrior poet of the Milesians or Gaels, who sailed in to Ballinskelligs Bay around 1,750 B.C, vanquishing the magical Tuatha de Danaan and banishing them to the underworld. The alignment is in line with the summer solstice sunrise over Lough Currane,and the winter solstice sunset.over the bay

The warrior poet, Amerghin, stepping on to the land, uttered an incantation, the ’I Am’, about which Robert Graves writes in ’The White Goddess’, "English poetry education should really begin, not with the Canterbury Tales, not with The Odyssey, not even with Genesis, but with the Song of Amerghin, an ancient Celtic Calendar-Alphabet."

It is no wonder that the land here resonates with this history, of warrior poets and the women who bore them.