eolaí the artist
LightNews LightNews
banner
eolai.bsky.social
eolaí the artist
@eolai.bsky.social
4.3K followers 1K following 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/
Prints: Paused (Looking for new platform)
Posts Replies Media Videos
eolai.bsky.social
Have a #painting why don't you. "Bantry Brendan" was painted because I like sitting in the west Cork town eating a sandwich as I look up at the sculpture, by Imogen and Ian Stuart, of Brendan the Navigator looking out to the Atlantic - or Bantry Bay at least. #SpeirGhorm #ArtYear
Painting in portrait format of stylized bronze statue of St Brendan and another monk in a tiny boat atop a grey stone plinth against a sky that is somewhere between blue and turquoise. The boat has curved spiral-ish wave bands attached to its side, and Brendan is standing up with his arms outstretched, the other monk sitting behind him. The bronze is rendered realistically in its bronze metal colour with green patches of patin, and some very dark shadows on underside of waves bands, and lenghtways pieces of 'wood' that curve dramatically up at the front of the boat, and along creases of the monks' robes. Signed bottom right, Liam Daly
November 9, 2025 at 10:00 AM
eolai.bsky.social
A #painting for you of our neighbouring island. "St Ives" was started live on video during one of my 24-hour marathon things, and meant to be finished in the same live stream - but I held onto it to tweak and eventually 3 and half years later I was happy with it. #ArtYear #Scape
Landscape format in acrylics on mat board. Bottom two thirds is a broad harbour with tide out and 18 small boats scattered on the wet sand. Sand is ochre, deep orange, and pink, with pools of blue dotted around. Boats are mostly some combination of white and blue with orange buoys hanging on their sides and dark ropes trailing horizontally in the sand. Top third of the painting is town and sky. Town rises up from harbour on hills, with most on one central hill. Buildings are rendered mostly in blues with white details and dark green splotches for areas with trees. Sky is painterly yellow. Signed bottom right, Liam Daly
November 7, 2025 at 11:24 AM
eolai.bsky.social
Here, have a #painting "Rosmuc, An Aill Bhui" is one of several I've done from times on the south Connemara peninsula. That ridge on the far side of the water is Cnoc Mordáin; it became a good friend of mine first time I saw it. I make friends with mountains. #SpeirGhorm #ArtYear #TidesOutTuesday
Wide panorama format on canvas. Coastal scene across foreground of orange seaweed and rocks of dark blue with pale almost white highlights. A pale narrow horizontal pool of water is on the left with a lot of rocks around it and areas of maroon in the seaweed and shadows. Another body of water, a very narrow sliver of very pale blue is in the distance stretching from the right edge across all of the right half and a little into the left half. The horizon just past it divides the painting in two and is where a low ridge of a softly undulating pale blue mountain sits. The sky is a painterly yellow with paler yellow clouds blended in. Signed top right in red, Liam Daly
November 4, 2025 at 8:36 PM
eolai.bsky.social
Last weekend I was in Barcelona sketching and generally having an amazing time. This is Barceloneta, in the large Plaça del Poeta Boscà with its wonderfully funky market building. #urbansketching
A panorama sketchbook is opened with a colour sketch across both pages making an extra-long panorama. Paper is rag cotton with deckled edges. Sketch is done using black ink line in various fineliners, water based media of vivival color sheets and viviva pan set, inktense coloured pencils, white gel pen, posca pens, Liquitex acrylic paint markers, Faber Castell grey brush pens, and Derwent paint pens. View across a large square at a line of buildings mostly narrow and 5 or 6 stories high, though a wide orange one on the right half is just 3 stories high. Most of its windows have some form of green shutters or cloth coverings, and the large ones have balconies. At street level it has shops and many bicycles are locked in stands outside. Adjoining it on the right is a tall pink building, 3 window bays wide and darker at street level. A green building to its right is obscured by green foliage on the right edge of the sketch. The other apartment buildings to the left are mostly creams and yellows, some with long balconies across all three windows of each story, and others with isolated balconies. Those buildings gradually go behind a large building in the square dominating the left half - that of an old market with a modern metal black covering of various planes sloping and arching. In front of the market are two large yellow umbrellas over people eating at a cafe or restaurant. The leftmost building behind the market is a glass tower of narrow blue and green windows. The sky is a bright blue, matching the blue of a metal square kiosk in the centre behind which is a gap in the buildings as there is a street leading to the square there.
November 2, 2025 at 8:12 PM
eolai.bsky.social
A #painting for youse. "Night Mist" was on the go for years, having come out of a time when I lived with a small dog in a little cottage on the northwest coast, and when mist allowed I'd spend evenings looking out across the sea to the distant island. #ColorADay" #BlueTue #ArtYear #SpeirGhorm
Wide landscape format in acrylics on canvas panel. Smokey variable blues with the darkest ones on the bottom half, though parts of the top half are also dark if not as dark, and similarly there are lighter sections in the bottom half too - though none as bright as some of the sections in the upper half. A few tiny dots of yellow, like distant lights, with one larger than all the others are on what might be land along the horizon. Signed bottom right: Liam Daly
October 21, 2025 at 11:00 PM
eolai.bsky.social
A #painting to look at. "Castlebellingham" was painted on a visit - much too short - to County Louth having cycled there from Navan. It was a magical time. #SpeirGhorm #ArtYear
Landscape format in painterly acrylics on top of red which shows through in places. Small village green on left mostly in shadow with seven or more trees in full green and blue foliage. Beyond it visible under foliage and through trunks is row of pale 2-story buildings in pale blue shadow from left edge of painting then bending into a street which fades into distance in the centre of the picture where it meets an indistinct dark clump of trees. The opposite side of that street extends to the right in sunlight where the row of 2-storey buildings faces the green with trees. Nearest building on right looks like it might be a pub, white with black windows, doors, fascias and corner stones. Past it the buildings are brown, ochre, bright pink, and then small and indistinct pale colours. Roofs are slate of a very dark blue. Green with trees has a footpath around its edge and on the near end corner are a tree stump and behind it a flower planter. Surface of street is muted dark teal in shadow and paler in sunlight. Street surface is a darker turquoise in shadow and pale teal in sunlight. Sky is a cloudy yellow, cut by overhanging street wires, and peeping through a lot of holes in foliage. Signed bottom right in red, Liam Daly
October 20, 2025 at 3:30 PM
eolai.bsky.social
A #painting for you. "West Pier, Dún Laoghaire" came out of multiple cycles and walks to the end of the lesser walked of Dún Laoghaire harbour's two main - and magnificent - piers. I like stonework. #SpeirGhorm #ArtYear #Scape
Landscape format loosely painted in acrylics on mat board. Small stone lighthouse at centre of circular paved walled-in ending of pier. Sunny day. Sky mostly blue with white wispy clouds mostly to right where sky breaks through in parts in a pale teal. Pier and light house stones are in yellows and oranges with some red in shadow of curved wall on right. Line details are in blue, red, and white. Lighthouse has green railing around base, a green narrow door on the left up 3 or 4 steps from base, and a green lantern on top. Shadow is on left edge of curved lighthouse and left sides of circular steps at base. The cast blue shadow of lighthouse itself extends out to the left from base of lighthouse. Signed top left, Liam Daly
October 17, 2025 at 9:59 PM
eolai.bsky.social
Tomorrow I'll be in Liverpool, so here's a sketch I did there a couple of years back, on the day we interred my mother's ashes in her hometown - as I cycled to Waterloo and sketched this group of buildings on South Rd before returning to family and going to the cemetery. #ArtYear #UrbanSketching
Landscape format in loose watercolours and ink lines, of a 3-storey red-brick (with lines of relief decoration) terrace - the top storey being ornate dormer windows, with a couple of modern 2-storey buildings attached at the far (right) end. The gable end is visible at left end with a similar period 2-storey red-brick house attached at the rear to the left. Middle story windows are angled bays. Ground floor is stone bricks in rendered in yellows with large dark windows and arched doorways. Shops and parked cars are loosely sketched on right half. Handwriting along top: Waterloo Buildings, South Road, Waterloo, Liverpool - Friday, August 19, 2022
October 17, 2025 at 3:33 PM
eolai.bsky.social
#painting "Clontarf Shelter" came out of a cycle one morning from Howth harbour home to Dublin west, when I stopped a few times along the promenade at Clontarf to enjoy the architecture of the wind shelters, resolving to paint one when I got home. #ArtYear #SpeirGhorm #WindowsOnWednesday
Landscape format in acrylic, loosely painted and textured with a palette knife. A narrow horizontal strip of grey running across the centre is a promenade with a low dark brown wall on the far edge, a pale blue river on the other side of the wall, a narrow lilac band of land, and the top third being blue sky. The near side of the promenade is a lawn of various greens. In the centre at the promenade facing the river is a very pale green concrete shelter in 5 vertical segments, with two of them having a port hole through which we can see the river. The top is a brighter shade of green into yellow as the shelter curves into a roof. To the left of the shelter is a straight ornate lamp-post. Signed bottom right: Liam Daly
October 15, 2025 at 1:28 PM
eolai.bsky.social
Since I started filing copyright infringement reports to get my paintings taken off Temu, a small industry of AI replacement paintings has sprung up, with dozens of brightly coloured paintings purporting to be by me. Here's a sample of what is supposedly Dublin's Poolbeg chimneys - painted by "me".
Screencap of 2 rows of 5 products, 8 of which are square cushions and one from each row is physical picture in portrait format. All of them have boldly coloured industrial chimneys, with some autumn foliage on trees or overhanging in the foreground. The blue water of a bay is visible in most, and the skies are blue or cloudy white. The number of chimneys is 3 or 4 in all but one which has 2. The chimneys are random blotchy areas of red and white, or just cream, rather than the red and white bands of the top halves and plain concrete bottom halves, of the actual poolbeg chimneys. Visible prices range from below €3 and €4 to one that is under €8.
October 13, 2025 at 12:38 PM
eolai.bsky.social
An old #painting for you. 31 yrs ago I did a cycle tour by myself of the newly independent Czech Republic. Březnice was a town I stayed in and when leaving I enjoyed the view looking back at the church in the square where I stayed. A few months later I painted that view. #ArtYear #Scape #SpeirGhorm
Landscape format in acrylics on heavy paper. Loosely painted blotchy marks everywhere. Under a grey and white sky with red underneath breaking through, we are looking up a curving street lined with 2 and 3-story houses, all rendered in panels of oranges and yellows. The house on the right has a black skirt as do two of the houses on the left. Slate roofs on the left are rendered in red, orange and violet. Antennas are attached to most of the houses at the front from by upper story windows. The windows of all levels in the houses and the church are dark purple and blue. The street is curving to the right to the side and back of a large church similarly coloured save for two dark onion domes at the top of towers either side of the front which is facing left so we can't see it but for the tops of the towers. The street surface is a dark grey and foothpaths both sides are purple with lilac kerbs. Signed top left, LIAM '95
October 10, 2025 at 7:35 PM
eolai.bsky.social
A photo from back in the days when I had a studio. And sometimes of an evening the sun would shine in through the loading doorway. Which was just a big hole with no door or window. And I liked it. This was a large painting for me, one that ultimately sold to a good Cork home. #painting #ArtYear
Landscape format photo of a panoramic painting hanging on a mesh wall, with an arch-topped spotlight on over half of the painting. The painting is about 30 cm x 100 cm and in a very loose style depicts a section of Dublin's Ormond Quay showing ten adjoining narrow buildings, all bar two of various warm orange red-brick, each of them 4 or 5 stories tall and wearing a blue hat of a slated roof with a chimney separating them from their neighbour. All of the them have a dark street level shop front bar 2 which have a Georgian door with columns and a fanlight. The river wall with the railings of the boardwalk runs across the bottom, just above the dark shadow of the underside of the boardwalk. Signed top left, Liam Daly on the sky which is yellow and like the buildings glows in the sunlight of the arched beam.
October 9, 2025 at 4:18 PM
eolai.bsky.social
#painting "Harold's Cross" was done on location as the sun was setting and my hands getting colder. I'd sketched in town earlier that day then cycled around Dublin 6 and its impressive houses before sitting in the tiny sliver of a park I'd always wanted to go to. #ArtYear #SpeirGhorm #UrbanSketching
Landscape format in ink line, watercolours and other water media on mixed media paper. View of terrace of single-storey cottages from inside a park showing grass lawn in foreground and a scots pine tree at both the left and right edges, rendered in dark greens, blues and purples, and a little brown, with sparse dark green foliage. Between them is a small baby leafless brown tree and behind the trees we see through black railings to the houses. Each cottage has a Georgian door with a fanlight above and a single narrow window to its side. From left to right the doors are red, black, grey, lilac, and blue, and each of them is up a set of stairs so we can see the top of a basement below. Their slate roofs are rendered in blue with cream chimneys that have orange pots. Sky is left blank white. A white car and a black car are parked in the right half of the picture on the road in front of the houses facing right. Signed bottom right in black ink, Liam Daly
October 8, 2025 at 7:58 PM
eolai.bsky.social
#painting "Roundstone Bog" made a huge impression on me. Perhaps you already know I like our bogs, but the bog in between Roundstone and the Twelve Bens is a wonderland of water and bog vegetation, littered with stories and legends. I'll be painting it again. #ArtYear #SpeirGhorm #BlueTue
Square format in acrylics on mdf panel. A horizon divides the painting into a top and bottom half. The bottom has painterly low alizarin crimson bog vegetation and very pale blue bodies of water in pools that cover an even greater area with some of the pools being separated from other ones by mere slivers of alizarin or ochre. Along the horizon are some strips of land of yellow ochre and maroon with hilly peaks, and along the horizon behind them jutting up is a distant rocky ridge of pale blue almost lilac mountains with warm tones seeping through like rocky slopes, and their jagged tops having their high points of two triangular peaks. Sky is a painterly pale blue with a hint of teal. Painting was scanned before I signed it.
October 7, 2025 at 9:23 PM
eolai.bsky.social
Have a #painting. "West Cork Trees" came out of cycling past these lads several times out west of Clonakilty where I would catch a glimpse of them through a gap in a hedgerow and despite how far they were away they would always arrest me. I hope they're doing ok. #SpeirGhorm #ArtYear #BlueSkyMonday
Landscape format in acrylic on canvas. On far side of a pale grey-green field with tufts of short vertical strokes of green and blue, is a small dark-green broken hedgerow about one running horizontally, about one quarter the way up from the bottom, and from it grow 2 trees both with twisting branches of green and red without foliage and then some clumps of blue-green foliage just at their extremities. Beyond trees is another field, rendered as a narrow strip of blazing orange and at far side is line of trees and bushes in paler blue-green than the near hedgerow. Sky is pale blue in the top half with some strips of clouds high up, but the bottom half of the sky directly behind the trees down to the horizon is one large dark mass of billowing clouds topped with lighter fluffy edges of almost white. Signed bottom right: Liam Daly
October 6, 2025 at 10:00 PM
eolai.bsky.social
A newer #painting for you. "Roscommon Bog", finished only a few weeks ago, came out of a lifetime of enjoying the bogs in the middle of Ireland. Many of my earliest days of cycling involved 200 km loops out into the bog of Allen. This painting came out of a later day. #ArtYear #Scape #SpeirGhorm
Landscape format in acrylics on canvas. The horizon is very high, about one sixth from the top of the painting and everything below it is the bog. The bog is rendered in horizontal bands of varying widths and hues of purples and oranges, giving a warm rusty effect overall punctuated by dark bands. Loosely the bog gets lighter the further away it is, but the immediate foreground is lighter than the next band, and between them is a bright horizontal puddle, in shades of very pale blues and yellows as it reflect the sky. About two-thirds of the way up is a very narrow horizontal strip running the full width of the painting, of pale grass growing. Beyond the bog along the horizon sits a gently undulating landscape of a distant patchwork of very pale green fields with pale blue-green hedgerows, trees and bushes. The sky is a very pale smokey blues and teal. Signed in blue in the bottom right corner, Liam Daly
October 3, 2025 at 10:31 PM
eolai.bsky.social
Ah here, have another #painting. "Ormond Quay" was done 3 years ago. I based it on a lifetime of loving Dublin City's quays. I like buildings, squares, rectangles, right angles, that sort of thing, and my head is full of them all the time. Sometimes they come out like this. #ArtYear #SpeirGhorm
Landscape format in ink lines, water media and white gel pen. Terrace of 6 narrow buildings, with the leftmost having 5 stories but each of the rest 4 stories and 2 bays wide with shop fronts at street level. They are all different shades of orange and pink with brick indicated sometimes, except one building in the middle which is white over a dark blue shop front of three narrow dark arches. The building at the left end has balconies at the corner windows on the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd floors. Roofs are slate of blues and purples. The river stone wall runs across the bottom in purples and greens and greys with isolated stones highlighted by solid shape or outline in black or white. The river is purple brown green blue sort of. Roofs are blue or purple slate. Windows mostly black. The tops of cars and vans can be seen between the river wall and the shop fronts. Sky is left blank white. Signed bottom right Liam Daly
October 1, 2025 at 10:21 PM
eolai.bsky.social
A #painting from way back now, from a time when my head was full of hopes and dreams. "Meath Street Shopping" came out of, well, liking one of Dublin's streets, one where I did a lot of shopping when I was a teenager. That's it really. #ArtYear #SpeirGhorm
Landscape format in loose painterly acrylics. Street scene showing two shops. On the left is a small shop with a red sign on the fascia in yellow: "Fruit & Vegetables". Two women are seen from behind about to walk in the door. The one closest to the door has fair hair, and a long red coat, while the woman behind her has short brown hair, and a mustard jacket over a blue skirt or dress, with a little red bag over her right shoulder. The shop window has colourful produce of reds and yellows and is not much wider than the narrow door to its left. Window and door frame is white, wall is red, and surround of sign above is purple blue. Shop on right has red & white striped canopy. A man and woman stand looking in the window, he in a generally indistinct dark brown that blends trousers, jacket and head with hat. His hands are in his pockets as he leans lightly into the woman who has brown hair, and a long blue coat, as she leans lightly back into him. A younger short-haired blonde woman in red trousers and short blue jacket wheels past a buggy with a child to the right edge of the painting. Path is grey, road is blue and red with yellow line. Kerb is an uneven black, and most of the shapes in the picture have a broken sketchy black outline. Signed bottom left: Liam Daly '94
October 1, 2025 at 8:40 PM
eolai.bsky.social
On this day in 1996 I was cycling in Nebraska, about to cycle out of Lincoln having just recorded for my journal the previous day of cycling from Omaha which, other than being handed a sub for lunch, was the first day where nobody spoke to me between accommodations except for this little kid:
Text: I think, the only person who spoke to me was a little kid when I was zig-zagging my way through the lesser streets of the suburban grid here of Lincoln. There was a little kid, at most three, sitting on a little plastic tractor and he beams at me, his eyes, and then he says: -Hello fucker! His sister told him not to do that. His sister was a little bit bigger. I had already started to say Hi, not realising what he was saying, and smiling at him. He seemed happy.
September 30, 2025 at 11:18 PM
eolai.bsky.social
"Portrush Station", a #painting from a time I spent on my bicycle in Ireland's Antrim coast. After starting the day in Derry I cycled by Lough Foyle and Magilligan and around Binevenagh. I was sick when I reached Portrush so conked out and the next day walked around and painted. #ArtYear #SpeirGhorm
Landscape format, loosely painted in acrylics on mat board. Street with maroon surface runs from bottom bending away to right. On left is green 4-story hotel building with yellow detailing and seven peaks in roof accommodating 4th floor windows. Five more 3-story retail buildings complete terrace to its right until it bends and is obscured by building on right side of street, a half-timbered white and black mock tudor tower with clock and weather vane. Lower parts of tower are red brick with wide arched window below a small horizontal one. Square wooden planters mark right edge of street in foregound with shadow side of bluck planks facing street, and sunshine sides facing viewer of bright green. White railings run down centre of street, with segments of blue shadow caused by planters to their right. A three-light lamp-post on left is tallest structure. Sky is unclouded blue albeit painted in a smokey style with hints of red breaking through. Signed bottom left: Liam Daly
September 30, 2025 at 9:12 PM
eolai.bsky.social
A #painting from a happy time. "Derryreel 4" is a north County Donegal work of the hills that were directly behind the cottage where I briefly lived with my little American dog. This is the far side, where we would walk through the bog on an old railway line. #ArtYear #MountainMonday #SpeirGhorm
Landscape format in heavily textured acrylics on mat board. Under a sky of white and grey is two hills, brown with on the hill on the right a couple of stand out straight edged green fields and on the golden brown hill on the left a small wooded plantation rendered as dark green with blue blobs, also in an area with straight edges. The foreground is a yellow-green field with a stone wall around it, and along the bottom an orange field with dark blue showing through the broken brush strokes. Due to the heavy texture there is a lot of broken colour throughout the painting.
September 29, 2025 at 10:13 PM
eolai.bsky.social
Anyway, have a #painting "Golden Leaves III" is another in the series that came when I had my little American dog here in Dublin, and we would walk looking for autumnal leaves. After jumping into a pile of them she would look at me wondering why I had done that. #ArtYear #SpeirGhorm #ForestFriday
Landscape format in acrylics with textural marks, on canvas. Against a deep blue painterly sky is a messy network of small branches, the main ones which come out of the bottom left and centre, generally fanning out. They are a rough black with touches of yellow, pale blue, and red, most without any foliage but there are several autumnal leaves, curling and readying to drop, in a cluster in the top left and sparsely throughout the rest of the painting. Each leaf is a mixture of yellows, dark reds, and greens, with some almost white highlights and small very dark shadows, all fitting on a fish-bone pattern if mostly curled a bit. I took the photo before signing the painting.
September 26, 2025 at 7:41 PM
eolai.bsky.social
As the current thing is basically an ad for an event that will have passed after this weekend I assume it will be gone in days. I even preferred the ghost remains of the squirrel after it was taken down - I took this photo of it 3 years ago.
Photo in landscape format of same upper stories side wall as in photo that started thread, but this is from 3 years ago and shows the remains of the 3-dimensional mural/sculpture after the found objects had been removed, so you see the painted outline of the squirrel and a few other elements of dark brown paint on the cream wall..
September 26, 2025 at 10:17 AM
eolai.bsky.social
Town is absolutely crawling with Americans. Tons of them. I hope they have a good time and all, but I preferred the squirrel.
Landscape photo at dusk of the view across Dublin's Tara Street to a wall and above it to two upper stories of the side of a pub where there used to be a giant 3-dimensional mural/sculpture, made of found metal and other items, of a squirrel which now has a 2-dimensional mural celebrating the upcoming NFL game in Dublin between the Vikings and the Steelers. The wall is plain crams with traffic boxes, orange barriers and then completely covered in graffiti on the right where above it behind the pub is the long grey structure that is Tara Street Railway Station and behind it a clump of pyramid topped small glass skyscrapers (at a stretch).
September 25, 2025 at 8:12 PM
eolai.bsky.social
An older #painting. "Cottage from Sheep Field" came from when I lived with a little dog in a cottage in the northwestern corner of Ireland, in north County Donegal, when we would walk into the sheep field and look back to enjoy the view the sheep had of our idyllic cottage. #ArtYear #SpeirGhorm
Landscape format in acrylics on canvas. A white single-story cottage with grey slate roof, white chimneys, and an extended out porch, is viewed from a green field through a gap between a grey and blue stone gable-end of an outbuilding on the right and a maroon hedge with a fence and dry stone wall on the left. Behind the cottage is a low ridge of greens and greys and blues with touches of purple. On the left behind the hedge is the grey trunk and branches of a tree topped with maroon and purple foliage. Sky is a painterly yellow. Foreground has scuffed white and yellow details on green grass. Cottage door and narrow windows are blue framed. The right end of the cottage has an extra piece appended.
September 25, 2025 at 2:04 PM