Great Blasket Island – Irish Landscape Metal Print

Description

Great Blasket Island – Irish Landscape Metal Print by Mark Tisdale.

This Irish landscape metal print features the Great Blasket Island. The Blaskets are in County Kerry, Ireland. The photo this work is based on was taken by me on New Year’s Day when I visited Ireland. It was a beautifully sunny morning and the warm light hitting the Great Blasket island was a sight to see. I believe we were on Dunmore Head but I’m not positive about the location. What I remember most was the cold sea air and the bright winter sun. Rather than cold I felt invigorated and warm.

The Blasket Islands were once occupied but the last people left in the evacuation of 1953. Great Blasket was never heavily populated. Under 200 people at any time called it home. From a distance it looks beautiful but apparently it was a tough life living there and the people on the island were frequently cut off by rough seas.

But there’s a rich literary legacy of the Blasket Islands as there are three well-known books that were written in Gaelic, first hand accounts of life there in the last generation or so that called it home. I’ve read the English translation of a couple of these and they were simply fascinating. They are An tOileánach (The Islandman) by Tomás Ó Criomhthain, Peig by Peig Sayers, and Fiche Blian ag Fás (Twenty Years A-Growing) by Muiris Ó Súilleabháin. Books are still the closest thing we have to time machines.

I would love to know what captures your attention in this panoramic Great Blasket Island artwork? Have you visited the islands or seen them from a distance as I experienced them? Perhaps you simply love the rich colors of this Irish landscape metal print?

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