The Curragh Plains | The Great Void of the Fianna

I walked out onto the Curragh Plains when the morning fog was low and heavy swallowing the edges of the world.

This vast unfenced commonage is a beautiful void an ocean of green turf that has never been broken by a plow.

Beneath the grass lies a subterranean landscape of ancient henges ritual earthworks and burial barrows that date back to the Neolithic dawn.

It is a place where history and mythology blur into the same physical soil.

In the old tales this plain was the training ground and meeting place for the Fianna the legendary band of warriors led by Fionn mac Cumhaill.

They ran across these short grasses and hunted the great deer across the open expanse.

The land feels designed for movement and assembly on a mythic scale.

There is an undeniable energy here a sense of vast space that leaves the human observer entirely exposed to the elements.

I spent the afternoon tracing the circular ring ditches of a prehistoric henge which is barely visible from the ground but stands out clearly from a distance when the light hits at a low angle.

These circles are geometric whispers from a people who saw the sky and the earth as a continuous sacred loop.

The grass inside the enclosures looks different greener and more vibrant as if the soil retains a memory of the rituals performed thousands of years ago.

To sketch these ancient lines is to realize that the plain is not empty at all but filled with invisible architecture.

Visual and Textural Impressions
The palette is a subtle wash of pale moss greens muted gold and the deep slate gray of a threatening midlands sky.

I am inclined to work with heavy rough paper and layers of translucent watercolor to capture the shifting quality of the light over the grass.

I am inspired to work with raw gesso and charcoal mixed directly on the page to build up the misty horizon line where the earth meets the clouds.

The vastness requires a minimalist approach where the negative space of the paper speaks as loudly as the marks themselves.