LIMITED EDITION FRAMED PRINTS

Hi Everyone,

I've been busy recently preparing for forthcoming exhibitions, the Mayo Artists biennial show and the Greenway Artists' Christmas Show, the former to be in the Linenhall in Castlebar, and the latter to be in The Mulranny Park Hotel, Mulranny, both in Co. Mayo.
This has also given me the opportunity to prepare a series of signed Limited Edition black and white framed prints in small runs. In fact, for 2 of the 4 images (of the New Michael Davitt Bridge, Achill Sound) only 5 prints of each are being made. The others run to just 25 prints each.
Here is a framed print of one of the Michael Davitt Bridge images.
I've enjoyed all the prep. for these runs. Something that is essential as a photographer, as it is for all artists, is getting your work out there and seen. The prints are only small in size, the frames only being 15" x 10" so can be hung almost anywhere. They will be on sale from tomorrow in exhibitions I participate in.
Christmas is coming!

Have a good week & keep shooting & creating,
Mark

Hazel trees

This is a recent image of hazel trees in a coppice in Co. Mayo that I happened to notice. I thought a photo would allow me to work on it and express something slightly abstracted and moe interesting. I hope you like the result.

Have a good week,
Mark

DEATH OF A HEN

DEATH OF A HEN IN THE DEAD OF NIGHT AFTER A MEAL OF ROAST PHEASANT ACCOMPANIED BY A BOTTLE OF MERLOT.


And so I am here
between
mountain and sea
mussel shells
and oyster shells
and one time
even that lobster thermodor
but last week here it was
all sudden death
and blood
all animal lust
and wanting
over flung pheasant carcasses
a sudden suicide it seemed
but no one heard
that scream
in the dead of night
in the sea storm
as the hen was torn from
her safe bed
from our grasp
and something wicked went
over the hill
dragging a pet
without a look
back
under the growling moon.

14/11/2011
Mark F Chaddock

Lucky Horseshoe (Donkey shoe?)

This is a rusty horseshoe I came across that is fastened to a post on the Greenway close to the Mulranny/Achill road. It must have been found and put there by a council worker during the construction, I feel.
My Grandmother's farm was close by, so the romantic poet in me would like to believe it was the shoe of a donkey I knew when holidaying on the farm when I was only knee-high to a grasshopper.

Have a good week,
Mark

New Poem draft

Her is a first draft from a recently composed poem I wrote towards my 2014 poetry collection. I hope to publish a book of Selected Poems in 2012.

The Empty Black Chair

The empty black wooden chair
To me
Is not just an
Empty black wooden chair

There’s a sheepdog lay at the foot of it
& a turf fire to one side with turf sods drying
& a pair of black tongs leaning against the hearth

Its spindles are accordion players that have listened to the tides and winds and are fluent in their music

Its legs are old storytellers that have heard the banshee wailing at the gable & seen the man in the greatcoat walking back & forth over the bridge in the dead of night

Its seat is a young sean nos singer lulling the world with her voice
That resonates with the fields & mountains & streams

Its arms are the poet who has stayed up to watch the stars & moon
& listened to the language of eagles and ants and ancestors

Its shine is a dancer dancing the hare & the clouds on Slievemore
Mountain & travelling with the whales as they navigate the oceans

Its presence is a painter capturing light & texture, clouds & tides, brushing in Seasons & wild flowers in oils & charcoal & pastels, Naples yellow, Raw sienna, Ultramarine, Cadmium red.

Its ’suchness’ is old cottages and community dances & soda bread and salmon and collecting eggs and milking cows and yoking the donkey
& gathering turf and poitin & craic and all that was ever worth it.

The empty black wooden chair
To me
Is not just an
Empty black wooden chair.

Copyright Mark F Chaddock 2011
2/11/11