Hello, I`m in Switzerland. I didn`t plan on ending up here, but I`m glad I did. I`ve made a few split second decisions on this trip that have all worked out quite well. I left Vancouver on September 1st to travel around Europe until the end of October, beginning with two weeks in Ireland, the country which lured my friend Steph and I into this whole adventure. Here is a little sketch from our first day in Ireland just north of Dublin. We were exhausted from a long journey and basically collapsed on a rock when we saw the Irish sea for the first time and sat there for a while taking in the freshness of the breeze and all the time ahead of us. I dipped my finger in the sea to mark it on my drawing:
I am half Irish but know barely anything of my family roots but have been thinking a lot about that and craving more connection to all that knowledge and history and character, and before I left Canada I felt that I would be taking something back with me somehow, just from seeing Ireland with my own eyes. I had this idea come into my mind one day to take sort of impressions and rubbings of different surfaces there, and so I brought my sketchbook around most places looking for interesting words in relief, or wallpaper, symbols, anything. Here are a few pictures of my favourite ones, to share a few of my impressions of Ireland with you.
These are sketches I did in Shoot the Crows pub in Sligo, the town where my McDaniel family is from. I met up with a friend of a friend there who happens to also be a visual artist and musician in the Celtic band Dervish. He took us to this hidden place called the Fairy Glen, a muddy forest trail with dripping rock walls covered in ferns and vines. The Irish poet W. B. Yeats wrote a poem about this place and used to spend time there. This was where my sneakers stopped being white. I have so much more to say about Sligo and other counties, and our times at the pubs and the fantastic musicians that sit around drinking and jamming, and how I was talked into singing and they all played with me, but for now I can only leave you with these sketches and marks..
Ireland is truely a magical place and we met so many beautiful people that were so kind to us. I actually hoped to get into trouble because I knew that it would result in making new friends who would drop anything if you were in a jam. I also may have found out that my great grandfather is the missing branch of a family tree that has been searching for us for years. I talked to an old man in a bar and one thing lead to another and later that night I met up with relatives face to face. I have to do some more research about my great uncles and aunts but if this is true then I am related to a famous Irish country singer named Maisie McDaniel and many other musicians throughout the family. I always thought only my mom’s side was musical. Isn`t life wild? Once you start digging it`s hard to stop, because you see that we`re all so deep and there`s treasure everywhere.