eolaí the artist
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eolai.bsky.social
eolaí the artist
@eolai.bsky.social
4.4K followers 1K following 2.2K posts
I paint pictures. Cycled across continents. Like walking when not limping. Loved a dog. Writing a book. #art #cyclist #Dublin #efc Liam Daly he/him
Website: https://liamdaly.com/
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eolai.bsky.social
eolaí the artist @eolai.bsky.social · Oct 18
An introduction cogged from elsewhere online. Hello. I paint pictures, mostly of Ireland, but for 12 yrs now I've been a full-time unpaid carer so time to paint is rare. I've cycled across America and Europe, and among other adventures did a painting twitter cycling tour around Ireland. 1/2
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eolai.bsky.social
An Irish #painting to have a goo at. "Carrick-on-Shannon" came out of a cycle to the County Leitrim town where I started the day in Boyle and finished it in County Longford. I painted it because I like road markings - and days with green skies. #art #SpeirGhorm #ArtAdventCalendar
Landscape format, loosely painted on canvas. Flat white roundabout junction. Street from left bends into street straight ahead and as it goes into the right half of the painting it bends further left back behind itself. Buildings are 2 and 3 stories, joined together, with shop fronts at street level. They are mostly light blue or white, with one red halfway up the left side, and one yellow at the far end of the right side. Corner bricks of contrasting colours feature on several buildings. Roofs are various blues from mid to very dark. Beginning of the word coffee, is over the window on the gable end of the white corner building at the near end of the right side. Sky is a painterly lime sliced by a soft dark overhead wire, street surface is orange in left foreground with yellow box markings, green as it goes right past the white roundabout, and blue straight ahead beyond the roundabout. Signed bottom right in dark blue, Liam Daly
December 9, 2025 at 9:45 PM
eolai.bsky.social
Tonight I finished a book, which feels appropriate given the night it is because the book was Jeanette Winterson's "Christmas Days" (12 Stories and 12 Feasts for 12 Days). I actually only read the 2nd half of it this Xmas - because I read the first half last Xmas. And both years were better for it.
January 7, 2026 at 12:14 AM
eolai.bsky.social
Time to share a #painting from a couple of years ago. "Bovine II" came out of loving the company some shaggy bullocks gave me once upon a time in the west of Ireland. #art #speirghorm
Landscape format in acrylics. Against a painterly turquoise background is the head and shoulders of a cow, facing right with its head turned a little towards the viewer but not so much that we see the eye on the other side. Rendered in pale purples, lilacs, and creams and grey-greens with underlying strokes of pink and orange and some details in teal and alizarin, he's a shaggy beast with an electric edge of white and yellow where his hair is backlit along all edges including tufts on the top of his head, fine hairs from his chin, and all around his far ear. Along the right half of the bottom edge, some of its lower shoulder is in shadow of dark blue with lighter straggles hanging down over it and some purple drips deliberately running down into it. Pink inside the far backlit ear, and dark blue inside the near shadow side ear. Darker pink with grey surrounds the dark nostrils, and the eye is a bold very dark pointed oval with a touch of light and an alizarin top edge. Hair on the face down the centre curves one way or the other, almost swirling in the centre. Signed bottom right in dark blue, Liam Daly.
January 6, 2026 at 6:37 PM
eolai.bsky.social
On this last day of xmas I still have 2 of the 6 beers I bought for xmas. Might drink both tonight. In case the world ends tomorrow. Big night.
January 6, 2026 at 2:47 PM
Reposted by eolaí the artist
eolai.bsky.social
A #painting from the west of Ireland. "Enniscrone Pubs" came out of my annual carer breaks to the County Sligo seaside town where every year magic happens. This painting was one of a series of 4, each a gift for one of the people who make that magic possible. #art #SpeirGhorm #ArtAdventCalendar
Landscape format in acrylics on canvas panel. View straight ahead up a slightly uphill village street on a pure blue sky sunny day. On the left in foreground set in off the road are 2 white 2-story pubs with slate roofs, and a road off to the left between them. Beyond them a terrace of domestic houses and gardens trails into the distance. Right side of street is in shade with buildings closer to road. From the right edge in they are orange, cream, green pale blue and pink 2-story houses. The cream building is a pub with one large window beside its 2 simple doors and its name in letters above. A modern white bell tower of a church is further up the street. Road is grey with dashed white centre line and double yellow lines at the edge. The footpaths are pale grey-green. Signed bottom right, Liam Daly
December 16, 2025 at 8:02 PM
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eolai.bsky.social
A #painting for you. "Water Tower" came out of my cycle across America where the number of water towers I could see on the horizon would tell me not only the location of a town but also what to expect there. Useful in my pre-internet times. This one was in Nebraska. #art #ArtAdventCalendar #ArtYear
Square format in painterly acrylics on canvas. A brilliant sunny day. Low horizon. Foreground is deep yellowy-orange crop, with dark flecked details in reds, blazing oranges, and pinks closer to viewer where the dark edge of the crop reveals a triangle of orange grass in the bottom right. Standing on the horizon is a white water tower with blue shading on right, like a giant white burger held up by one central narrow column in shadow and about eight narrower columns around the edge. Tower dwarfs dark green trees on horizon, a mass of them from the left edge to directly behind the tower, and a couple of taller ones to the right of the columns. Sky is pure blue in loose brushstrokes. Tower has some hints of red along its edges. Sun is coming from high on the left, causing a blue shadow on the right of cylindrical part of the tower. Signed top left in dark blue, Liam Daly
December 17, 2025 at 9:35 PM
eolai.bsky.social
Have yerselves a #painting. "Martello Tower, Ireland's Eye" is from the east coast of #Ireland - specifically the small island off the north coast of Howth Head in County Dublin. It's not the only one of Dublin's many Martello towers I've painted, and I imagine it won't be the last. #art #SpeirGhorm
Landscape format in painterly acrylics on mat board. Against a pale yellow cloudy sky is the bluey green grey stone, with touches of lilac, wide curved flat-topped Martello tower sitting on loosely painted rocks of warm green greys and blue greys with touches of orange and also dark blue and alizarin fissures. A narrow blue window is about half way up the tower in the centre, and from it a pale rope hangs being pulled by a dark figure standing below on the base of the tower. There are flecks of red on the edges of the details of the tower and rocks. I photographed the painting before I added my signature.
January 4, 2026 at 9:10 PM
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eolai.bsky.social
A #painting for you. "Mayo Trees" came out of a ridiculously happy day in the west of Ireland. I could tell you about that day, but I'll let the trees do the talking. #art #SpeirGhorm #ArtAdventCalendar
Landscape format in painterly acrylics on canvas. Group of trees where about six dark narrow trunks twist up to a unified clump with distinct dark green foliage blobs, low on the left to tallest on the right. Through the trees behind is the bottom of an orange mountain sloping down left to right, and behind that in the distance on right is a pale blue pyramidal mountain. Foreground is a boggy brown with green and red details. Sky is big billowing white and blue-white clouds with blue sky peeping through especially in top left. Signed bottom right, Liam Daly
December 22, 2025 at 9:27 PM
eolai.bsky.social
A #painting. "Garristown". One cold day I went out at 5am, got two buses, unfolded my bike, cycled it a few km over a hill into very north County Dublin and sat down in this small village. I poured a cup of tea and thought, “I could live here”. Then I painted this as I drank my tea. #art #SpeirGhorm
Landscape format on paper. Ink and watercolour painting of two joined together two-story long stone buildings facing right. They have slate roofs of blue grey holding several grey chimneys, and are set in behind a lawn of mixed greens with two small grey driveways across to it, and at the end on the right three dark trees with light green upper parts. Lower story of near building has 4 narrow window bays with a black door on the right, and corresponding windows above including the door, though directly above the door around that window is all ochre. The stones of the near building are sporadic and rendered in different shades of cool and warm greys with a small number of orange stones dotted around, and also random outlines in black. To its left a large black door-gate joins the building to a single-story wall of similar style with a dark slate roof. Above that black door-gate we see the gable end of the long building from which an antenna stretches up past its end chimney. The further building on its right has pale grey stones with a centre black door and one window either side with details joining them to windows on the upper storey. The sky is left blank white. Signed bottom left in black ink, Liam Daly
January 2, 2026 at 9:30 PM
eolai.bsky.social
One of my Christmas stories from when I was, em, younger: "Going Home From A Christmas Work Party" eolai.medium.com/going-home-f... #SpeirGhorm
Going Home From a Christmas Work Party
-The last time we saw you was at the railway station trying to go up an escalator that was coming down. You were falling on your face.
eolai.medium.com
January 2, 2026 at 4:07 PM
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eolai.bsky.social
An older Irish #painting for you. "Three Cottages" came out of loving shapes as much as paint and landscape. It was one of a series of ten small paintings I did once upon a happy time. #art #SpeirGhorm #ArtAdventCalendar
Landscape format in painterly acrylics on watercolour paper. Gable ends of 3 cottages on edge of sloping patchwork of fields with sea beyond them. The highest cottage is at the top on the right, the horizon level with the bottom of its roof. The lowest cottage is on the left, at the bottom of a dip, the entire cottage below the horizon. The other cottage is halfway between them, with the horizon level with its chimney. Similar to stained glass effect, thick black lines outline edges of fields, cottages, turf and the horizon. Within those outlines paint is blocked in very loosely. Fields are greens, cottages white, sky grey, sea pale blue, turf brown-purple. The sky and sea are both painted brokenly such that in various spots they show parts of the orange under-painting. The photograph was taken before I signed the painting.
December 12, 2025 at 2:56 PM
eolai.bsky.social
Have yourselves a #painting. "Hover" came out of a time where I was walking locally here in Dublin just a few minutes from my door where I spent a long time happily watching a kestrel hover one day. #art #SpeirGhorm #birds
Square format in painterly acrylics on canvas. All over is blotchy mid-blue representing sky of a cloudy nature. The bottom sixth of the painting, the full width across, is the top of leafless narrow dark blue branches with red touches. The top of one tree on the right, in front of the clump, reaches up to the top of the painting. Centred in the blue space free of any branches on the left is the simplistic dark blue outline of a bird hovering. I took the photo of the painting before I added my signature.
January 1, 2026 at 8:50 PM
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eolai.bsky.social
Here, have a goo at a #painting. "Wall, Donkey" came out of a time I was cycling past a donkey that was behind a dry stone wall. In fairness I've passed a lot of donkeys behind walls, but on this occasion I stopped and told my furry friend I'd be doing a painting. #art #SpeirGhorm #ArtAdventCalendar
Landscape format in loose acrylics on canvas. Bottom third is a dry stone wall over which, on the right hand side, a donkey looks. Stones are a very pale yellow and lilac, with blue shading (and some touches of red) in the gaps. Donkey is pale grey-blue with almost white nose end, and is facing forward and standing by the right edge. There are touches of green in the coat of the donkey and even less of orange. The sun shines from directly above so the dark blue shadow of the head is below on its neck creating a strong contrast with the short white hairs underneath its mouth. The eyes are very dark with highlights on the lids as on the top of the back behind. Background is mid-blue where grass would be and dark blue and red above it in a speckled fashion like a bush or hedge. No signature because I took the photo before I signed it.
December 18, 2025 at 8:36 PM
eolai.bsky.social
I think looking at an Irish #painting might do no harm. "Inchydoney Sunset" was painted after several trips to west Cork by Clonakilty where I would invariably cycle up and down the bay carrying on my bicycle my paints, a case of beer, and a whole load of hopes and dreams. #art #SpeirGhorm #ArtYear
Landscape format in acrylics on canvas. Between a golden yellow sky and a golden yellow body of water stands a brown headland sloping gently down to the left, with dark blue bushes along the bottom by the bay's edge and a few lighter blue trees along its top. A white two story house with a very pale pink glow and blue-grey roof nestles into the headland left of centre near the bottom. It has four small windows on its gable end and two chimneys. Its right side is mostly obscured by another building, either a small house or an outbuilding, similarly coloured. Beyond the headland is a flat-ish gently rounded hill with a patchwork of pale brown fields separated by pale blue hedgerows. By the right side down by the edge of the bay is a small white out-building with a red door and sloping dark blue roof. The far half of the bay is a flat expanse of brown sand and green seaweed, with the near half being the golden water containing slight reflections of the house and the blue bushes and trees. Signed bottom right in blue, Liam Daly
December 31, 2025 at 7:23 PM
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eolai.bsky.social
Have a #painting. "Knocknarea III" came out of my annual visits to County Sligo where I get to visit the iconic mountain. This is a view from the south as you wend along the coast - which I recommend you do, ideally on a bicycle. #art #SpeirGhorm #ArtYear
Wide landscape format in acrylics on canvas. Coastal scene on a sunny day with pure pale blue sky. A series of fields with a bright blue bay coming in from the left in the bottom half of the painting in a sharp triangular wedge with the point at the right edge. In the foreground the near side of the bay are slivers of horizontal fields, a green one across the bottom edge with odd long yellow blades of grass, followed by an orange one behind it with strokes of soft green throughout to indicate it's a crop of some length, and on the right it has up to a couple dozen bales of hay in circular black plastic with light creating an arcing light blue highlight on each one. There is a dark green and red hedgerow on the far side of that field with a particularly large bush to the left of centre, and behind it are a couple of lime green and olive green fields with a line of bushes on the right close to the water's edge. On the far side of the bay is a beach of grey pebbles with a line of dark wine seaweed along the centre of most of it. Behind the shore the land slopes up gently with about a dozen horizontal fields of yellow-green and bright green, and about half way up them is a cluster of houses on the left and a line of a few houses with farm and outbuildings extending into the centre of the painting. They are suggestive more than exact, in greys and whites with roofs of dark blue and purple. At the top of the slope on the right is a field with rows of yellow and green coming down towards the viewer. Behind that sloping landmass is the main piece of the painting, the isolated humpbacked mountain of Knocknarea, with it steep grey stone side facing the viewer, the green of a mass of trees at the left end, bright green of fields with the pink of heather, on its lower slopes, a pale maroon streak along its top of heather, and the bump on its very top that is Queen Maeve's cairn. On either side of Knocknarea in the distance are blue mountains. Signed bottom left, Liam Daly
November 26, 2025 at 9:13 PM
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eolai.bsky.social
A #painting to look at. I can’t imagine a beautiful life without dark clouds. "Estuary Cloud" came from a place where you hear soft sounds, water quietly touching the shore, a lone bird calling out for a friend, and in the distance you can just make out - is it a tractor? #art #SpeirGhorm #ArtYear
Landscape format in acrylics on canvas. A somewhat stylized or simplified coastal scene predominantly green with a high horizon.The lower three quarters of the painting have wide uneven diagonal bands of colour, each with a slight gradient. At the bottom is canary yellow, above it a very dark, almost black, blue, then a warm green grey, then a green band, than a darker grey-turquoise, then another green, then a small amount of yellow before a sliver of dark alizarin and bold red right below the horizon where a sliver of almost white water reaches in from the left most of the way across the painting. Sitting on the horizon are three stark heavily undulating green hills with black ends by a gap where possibly the sea comes in. The sky is a bright warm white low down and to the left, with a cloudy dark blue with touches of green higher up and to the right. Signed bottom right in dark blue on yellow, Liam Daly
November 27, 2025 at 2:39 PM
eolai.bsky.social
Here, have a #painting. "Savage Rowan" came out of a challenge from an artist friend of mine where we both painted the same scene. This was mine and it eventually went to a good home in Galway. #art #SpeirGhorm #ArtYear
Landscape format in painterly acrylics on canvas. A tree with a short grey trunk with a dark outline splits and twists into a thick network of branches of blues culminating in a bush-like appearance at its top of orange and blue and red. Behind is a very pale body of water with horizontal traces of yellow and very feint touches of green and blue. A headland of pale green and grey is along the left side. Sky is a pale cloudy mix of pinks and yellows with a lot of white. Tree is growing from small patch of rough lime grass at water's edge, with grey rocks and orange to right and blue and green reeds to left and along bottom edge. Signed top left in blue, Liam Daly
December 29, 2025 at 7:14 PM
eolai.bsky.social
I also read "Mothering Sunday" by Graham Swift. It was beautiful and what I needed when painting. Although it's about a maid on her day-off when she goes to meet her upper-class lover, it's less about class and more about books and love and memory. Found it powerful and emotional.
December 29, 2025 at 5:30 PM
eolai.bsky.social
Painting season reduces reading but I still do some to help manage the anxiety it creates. "Descanso, or The Last True Fascist" by Jay Spencer Green, is like Flann O'Brien and Ian Fleming wrote a glossary together while on an acid trip. A rabelaisian riot. Very clever, very repulsive and very funny.
December 29, 2025 at 5:10 PM
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eolai.bsky.social
A #painting from another life. "Donegal Cottage II" - Where I lived when myself and my dog would talk and walk for hours. There was no hill to give this view, nor hot air balloon handy, so I did what I do when I need to look down and simply floated up there in my head. #art #SpeirGhorm #ArtYear
Landscape format in loose textured acrylics on mat board. White cottage in centre at angle so gable end facing viewer and front largely obscured by wine hedgerow that runs alongside wall on edge of, in the foreground, a rough yellow field with touches of orange and white and flecks of blue. Front of the cottage is extended with blue windows and door. Roof is dark slate of blue-green with white chimneys at both ends. To the right of the cottage is a grey stone out-building with corrugated roof of pale blue. Behind the cottage are small fields of green and maroon before a band of blue pine trees that runs along the base of a small mountain ridge, rendered in brown and blue with angled brush-strokes. Behind to the left is a pale blue mountain. Both mountains have a dark scratchy uneven outline. Sky is a paler blue with some flecks of yellow. Painting was photographed before I added my signature.
November 25, 2025 at 9:13 PM
eolai.bsky.social
Time for an older #painting. "Sheep, Stone Wall I" came out of walking and cycling past so many sheep and liking stopping to look at them. Same for stone walls. This sheep was in Ireland, but it's probably very like sheep in other countries. #art #SpeirGhorm #ArtYear
Square format in acrylic on canvas. On a painterly muted green background, paler and more towards an ochre higher up which is further away, stands a lone sheep in the bottom half of the painting with its right side facing the viewer and its head turned looking directly at the viewer. The sheep has a heavy coat and is rendered stylistically in flat areas of colour with hard curved edges. It has a navy head, ears, and legs, with lighter blue edging. Its body is white on top, then areas as you go down of cream, lilac, red, green and almost black underneath. In the background in the top right are a few loose stones of the remains of a wall, in navy with blue edging. Signed bottom left in dark blue, Liam Daly
December 28, 2025 at 10:56 PM
eolai.bsky.social
Posted the following announcement about my annual sale of paintings in a reply, so giving it its own post now:
"Nope. I failed to get the paintings finished so there won't be any event of new paintings this December.
I tried. I really tried. (1/5)
December 28, 2025 at 4:06 PM
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eolai.bsky.social
5 years now. Her final years were cruel, so I like to remember Mam with one of the earlier photos Dad took of her, taken when he was introducing her to Ireland and she was able to love life.
Portrait format photo of my mother, back when she about about 21, sitting beside a rough track on the grass bank of a lake, with pine trees behind her and through them is visible the water and a mountain slope beyond. Mam is wearing a long creamy yellow woollen coat over a long dark blue dress. She is smiling. It is a sunny day.
December 27, 2025 at 8:41 PM
eolai.bsky.social
A #painting for yehs. Speaking of the mother, one year I painted the Three Graces of her Liverpool's Pier Head, and because it was a card for her I left out the then ever-changing ticket office and landing stage. #art
Landscape format in bright painterly acrylics. Front on view of three buildings against a smudgy pale blue and white sky. The clock-tower topped Royal Liver Building on the left is deep orange and is about 10 stories high, the lower flat 6-story Cunard Building in the middle is yellow, and the central-domed Port of Liverpool Building on the right is light blue. All have loose details in bright and contrasting colours. Lilac buildings are behind. In front below a blue-grey river wall is the water along the bottom, rippling in greens and yellow over blue.
December 27, 2025 at 10:57 PM
eolai.bsky.social
5 years now. Her final years were cruel, so I like to remember Mam with one of the earlier photos Dad took of her, taken when he was introducing her to Ireland and she was able to love life.
Portrait format photo of my mother, back when she about about 21, sitting beside a rough track on the grass bank of a lake, with pine trees behind her and through them is visible the water and a mountain slope beyond. Mam is wearing a long creamy yellow woollen coat over a long dark blue dress. She is smiling. It is a sunny day.
December 27, 2025 at 8:41 PM