As I started to think of titles for the first pieces in my "IRELAND INSPIRED" series, I looked to poetry. I've never been very interested in poetry but I felt that these paintings needed titles that conveyed something about the piece and the place.
I began reading a variety of poems; some about Ireland, some not, some by Irish poets, some not. I came across lines or a couple of words that felt right for each painting.
These two paintings (one above, one below) of the Cliffs of Moher in County Clare, Ireland, were named for the poem below by American poet, Wallace Stevens.
To view my collection of landscape paintings, visit the landscape category in my shop.
The Irish Cliffs of Moher
by Wallace Stevens
Who is my father in this world, in this house,
At the spirit’s base?
My father’s father, his father’s father, his--
Shadows like winds
Go back to a parent before thought, before speech,
At the head of the past.
They go to the cliffs of Moher rising out of the mist,
Above the real,
Rising out of present time and place, above
The wet, green grass.
This is not landscape, full of the somnambulations
Of poetry
And the sea. This is my father or, maybe,
It is as he was,
A likeness, one of the race of fathers: earth
And sea and air.
