Original Painting | Mixed Media on Canvas | Framed
There’s something in this piece I still don’t fully understand, and maybe that’s what makes it feel so close. The Last Fisherman
carries that ache of being left behind. Of watching someone go, without knowing if they’ll return. The figure in the distance could be leaving for work, for survival, for a future that might never include coming back. Maybe it’s a story of migration. Or maybe it’s about someone who’s always been alone.
The towers on the horizon might be a city. Maybe Dublin. Maybe Poolbeg. Maybe somewhere imagined. I remember reading about the slow, quiet death of the fishing tradition in the west of Ireland and what it means when a way of life disappears, and no one really notices until it’s gone. I was also spending time in rural Ireland around then. And though I’m from Dublin, I’ve always felt that rural and urban Ireland live inside each other, one never truly leaves the other behind.
The surface is quiet but textured, soft but marked. The colours are weathered, like memories washed through salt and sun. That big pale sky, the wide stretch of land, the stillness of the moment—it all holds the tension of departure, and of staying too long.
On the left, the surface shifts. A strip of hessian pulls the texture into something raw, frayed, worn, almost like old netting or the side of a weather-beaten cottage. I didn’t add it with a plan in mind, but looking now, it feels like a quiet marker of erosion of the kind of life that’s slowly been disappearing along the coast for years.
Details:
Title: The Last Fisherman Medium: Mixed media (acrylic, plaster) Size: [Insert dimensions here] Finish: Protective varnish Certificate of Authenticity: Included
“This painting came from a place of not knowing. Not knowing if someone’s leaving, or why. Not knowing where home ends and history begins. I’m from Dublin, but I feel the pull of rural Ireland all the time, it’s part of me. Maybe this figure is a part of that too.”
The Last Fisherman holds space for those quiet questions we carry. About change, about belonging, about what gets left behind. This is a piece for those who feel the connection between place and person, between silence and story.
