Bicyclistic

My painting Rosmuc, An Aill Bhuí is being auctioned for the charities associated with the 2009 Irish Blog Awards.

UPDATE: Auction is now over - thank you to everybody for bidding and supporting.

(click to enlarge)

Auction: on eBay
(item No: 270350421009)

The painting was exhibited at the Awards in the fabulous Cork International Airport Hotel, and the auction for charity is my small way of saying thanks for my paintings being included at the event.

Bids start at EUR 0.99 Shipping is free worldwide. The auction is scheduled to run for 7 days with the end time being Thursday, 5 March 2009 at 16:23:34 GMT

Twice I stayed in the Gaeltacht in Rosmuc in Connemara in the west of Ireland. Opposite the house I stayed in one year was the boreen to Aill Bhuí, and this painting is the scene at the end of it.

The painting is on canvas, 24 inches long by 8 inches high. The painting continues around the sides which are 0.75″ wide. The staples in the canvas are out of sight at the back.

100% of the proceeds will go to Rape Crisis Network Ireland, and St. Patrick’s Hospital & Marymount Hospice. I’ll cover any fees and shipping.

If you can’t join in the bidding you can still help by linking, blogging, tweeting, etc. The painting for auction was chosen by readers from a pool of 5 that I put forward.

See more paintings exhibited at the Irish Blog Awards in the Cork International Airport Hotel.

As an thank you for my participation in the 2009 Irish Blog Awards at the very wonderderful Cork International Airport Hotel, there is an auction to benefit the charities associated with the ‘09 Awards.

I had wanted to give the winner of the auction a choice from one of these 5 paintings that were exhibited at the Awards, but that’s against eBay’s policies so if you could help me pick one I’ll put it up for auction.

[ UPDATE: Votes have been counted and Rosmuc, An Aill Bhuí is the painting being auctioned The others will go on sale shortly along with some more unsold from IBA '09]

All paintings are on canvas with painted sides.

Rosmuc, An Aill bhuí 24ins x 8ins
Cliffs of Moher III 10ins x 10ins	Sheep, Stone Wall 10ins x 10ins
Ireland, Pink and Blue 10ins x 8ins	Waterford 16ins x 12ins

Even if you won’t be bidding I’d appreciate your vote for what you think would be the best option.

This is not a review of the Awards; way too much happened and I’m way too tired to even begin to address a superb weekend. It’s understandable that those who aren’t present at the Awards focus on the results but the event is really about so much more. That is its strength, but I want to talk about something else right now.

Two Things.

1. There will be an auction of a painting from the Awards show to benefit the 2009 Irish Blog Awards charities. If I can work how to to do it, it will be a choice of several paintings. Keeping to schedules isn’t my strong point, but I intend to launch it tomorrow, Tuesday.

2. For a very brief period (3 or 4 days) the rest of the unsold paintings from the show will be offered for sale online at the Blog Awards show prices. Then their prices will increase by about 20% and they’ll be filed away as I move on to newer paintings.

For those waiting to see who won the latest free painting thing I ran, the answer to the question of how many paintings I exhibited at the Irish Blog Awards is 17.

17 was chosen by Patricia, who can now choose a painting from the prizepool. I believe I promised to add in at least another one, so I’ll do that in a couple of days (I need a day to recover after the effort of getting ready for the show).

There will definitely be more giveaways, again with questions that are guessable, and I plan to add a significant number of paintings, including larger ones, into the prizepool. Stay tuned. Tell your friends. Make friends.

If you see me at the 2009 Irish Blog Awards, I’ll be the one with too much hair eating my own beard.

I have some paintings going on display so you may be wondering who I am. It may appear that I am not smiling, but that’s because I’m miserable and don’t like people. When I’m happy I look exactly the same, so feel free to say hello.

Remember if your Irish isn’t too hot, that Eolaí rhymes with Holy Moley!

Enjoy the Awards - the hotel is seriously funky, in a very good way. I keep touching things to see if they’re real. Forgive me if I touch you.

For those wondering about the free painting I’ll give the answer once the paintings are exhibited - because then I’ll know.

The first correct answer (left as comment on this post), or the earliest closest if nobody gets it right, wins their choice of painting from the prizepool of paintings. I think there’s 14 paintings in there now and I intend to add to it during this competition, but it’s a busy week - which brings me to the question…

Q. On Saturday at the 2009 Irish Blog Awards in the Cork International Airport Hotel, there is an exhibition of my paintings. How many paintings will I exhibit?

Notes:
1. I don’t know the answer, and won’t until Friday
2. Previous winners are allowed to play
3. Damien Mulley is not allowed to play
4. I’ll leave this open all week, closing it on Friday evening before the hang
5. Just 1 guess per person allowed, and anything else that’s common sense
6. I’ll be working on paintings for the show until Thursday or, ahem, Friday

UPDATE: And the answer is…

There will be an exhibition of my latest paintings at the 2009 Irish Blog Awards in Cork on February 21st.

The Awards take place at the Cork International Airport Hotel, a hotel described as “almost sci-fi in its ambience” which is reason enough for me to be excited about the show, but even better is that when architect Henrik Frischgesell designed the hotel he stated he really wanted the CIAH to be an art hotel.

Other artists which have shown at the hotel include Neal Greig and Isobel Henihan.

So far as I can tell at this point, the paintings I’ll be showing will be landscapes and cityscapes. Although certainly not complete, probably the best place to have a look at previous paintings of mine is on the Irish Paintings page on Irish KC.

Getting ready for this show is the reason for the relatively quiet start to life here on Bicyclistic.com and it’s also impacted my output on American Hell and Irish KC. Painting in these temperatures is a slow affair. If you feel the need for a closer look at my progress, there is always twitter

To coincide with the build up to the show in Cork, I’ll run another free painting competition - so keep an eye out, though you will find more exciting things going on in the week building up to the awards.

In April I have another show, in Dublin, which I’ll post details of after the IBAs.

If you’d like to say hello to me in Cork, being a stereotype I’ll be sporting rather a lot of hair.

This painting of a stone cottage in the west of Ireland (I promise, I’ll get to painting cottages in the east of Ireland in time) is from a couple of days ago. Or maybe it was yesterday. Most of these days are a cold sleepless blur.

Anyway since then it has advanced and is now only an hour or two from completion. But you can’t tell that from looking at this earlier stage.

It might look like a mess but what you’re seeing is an underpainting over an underpainting. Remind me to link back to this when I post a picture of the finished painting. (update: The painting finished )

Fans of my twitter mug will be pleased to know that, courtesy of the man who came up with the idea, you can now order your own Twitter mug featuring a mosaic of your followers or of those you follow.

For the 2nd painting giveaway here on Bicyclistic.com, I asked a question that, like the 1st question, was guessable but if you fancied doing some serious homework (or were a reader with a freakish memory of my site IrishKC) you’d have a better chance of getting closer to the answer.

Question: In USD what is the total price of the 3 most expensive paintings that have sold while posted on IrishKC ?

Answer
Add the following:
1. Blue Mountains, Green Grass $775
2. Pearse’s Cottage $350
3. Killarney $300

Total = $1,425

Closest answer: $1,375 by Debbie, just $50 out.

Congratulations to Debbie! Go ahead and choose a painting from the prizepool; I’ll send you an email for an address to post it to.

Thanks to everybody for playing, I’ll be adding more paintings into the prizepool including new ones, so keep an eye.