I lived in Ireland in 1987 for a semester while in college. I stayed at the Park Inn Hotel just outside of Spiddal which back then was one of the last places Gaelic was spoken. We would wander along the cold sandy beach that fall, and borrow bikes to cycle into Galway. It was a fantastic mythical place to spend part of my young adulthood.

In March of 2013, I took my parents to Ireland on a package deal. My two world-traveling sisters were able to meet us at the airport in Dublin when we landed and we set off for a whirlwind tour. My parents live in Rosemount, Mn, which is named after Rosemount in Westmeath County, Ireland. We were looking for dad’s ancestors’ graves, one on each side of a road back off the main highway along some fields and a stone wall with sideways rain blowing.

These paintings are all based on photos taken by myself or my mom as Beaner drove our minivan along the narrow twisting roads and dad called out, “Slow down on these turns or we’ll meet ourselves coming down!”