When Jim Brennan set off from Kinsale in a thirty-year-old campervan, the plan was to paint the whole Wild Atlantic Way in a single summer. Fifty-two paintings later he arrived at Malin Head. Those paintings run through The Painter's Road as plates alongside the story.
People have been asking for them on a wall rather than a page. Twelve are now available as fine art prints.
What is in the first batch
They follow the road roughly as it was painted — Cork first, then Kerry, then west of the Shannon.
Cork. Kinsale Harbour at the end of the day, the painted terrace above the masts. Charles Fort, the star ramparts seen from below. The Old Head lighthouse on its narrow green finger. Mizen Head and the bridge over the gorge. And the red cabin of the Dursey Island cable car, swinging out over the sound.
Kerry. The Skelligs from Bray Head on Valentia. Moll's Gap, where the Reeks open out in front of you. The Conor Pass, narrow between the rock walls with the corrie lakes below. And the beehive huts at Slea Head, a thousand years of dry stone with the Blaskets lying out beyond.
West of the Shannon. The Cliffs of Moher caught early, before the coaches. Dún Aonghasa on the lip of its three-hundred-foot cliff on Inis Mór. And the Sky Road above Clifden, with the islands scattered below.
How they are printed
Each is printed to order on premium paper or canvas, in a range of sizes, and posted out. Nothing sits in a warehouse. The paintings are 4:3, so the standard sizes — eight by six, twelve by nine, sixteen by twelve inches — frame without any cropping.
The other seven are the West Clare paintings that have been there from the start: Kilkee Bay, George's Head in a storm, the Loop Head pictures, Dún Briste off Downpatrick Head.
More to come
Twelve is a first batch, not the lot. There are forty-odd plates in the trilogy, and the rest will follow as they are prepared — Connemara, Mayo, Sligo, and the long run up through Donegal to Malin Head, where the road and the summer both end.
The paintings appear in full in The Painter's Road — three illustrated volumes and the one-volume Complete Journey omnibus.