"The Country of the Young: interpretations of youth and childhood in Irish culture"

The Four Courts Press have just published this very interesting book:"The Country of the Young: interpretations of youth and childhood in Irish culture"

I was honoured that Kelly Matthews (co-editor with John Countryman) asked to use a detail of this rough I did for my Children of Lir stamp for the cover.


Here's the blurb:"Throughout the history of modern Ireland, cultural representations of youth and childhood have served as focal points for discussions of social and political issues. Topics for the essays in this collection range from Famine-era women’s autobiographies to filmic portrayals of post-Good Friday Northern Ireland; from considerations of Patrick Pearse and Máirín Cregan to Anne Enright and Claire Keegan. The result is a complex and provocative view of childhood experiences in modern Ireland, and of the ways in which youth and childhood have been interpreted in the work of Irish writers, politicians, dramatists and filmmakers."

My Angel Stamp Design

This was one of my favourite stamp designs but sadly it didn't make it through An Post's vetting process.
It's a shame because it was certainly quite a different approach from my usual work.

My First Day Covers for An Post

Here are a bunch of the first day covers that I designed to go with the stamps I did for An Post.
The top one with the rooftop drawing and the old fashioned typography is my favourite by a long way.

The Children of Lir; Unpublished Stamp Designs

I think these pictures, and other roughs I posted earlier, give a good idea of my stamp design process.

I decided against using the full image of the swan children of Lir sheltering from the storm and went for the transformation scene instead. But I was able to adapt the first design for use as a decorative panel on the stamp sheet.

Amongst some old roughs I found the mock-up below where I was considering the tragic image of the old children of Lir from The Names upon the Harp. 

It makes a nice companion piece to the scene of the four of them huddling together as swans.

Nativity Stamps from 1999

 Here are another set of roughs paired with the printed Christmas stamps that I did for An Post back in 1999.
I think these were the Christmas stamps I was most pleased with.

Oisín and Niamh of the Golden Hair

I recently rediscovered another of my roughs for the mythological stamps I designed a number of years ago for An Post.
This one illustrates the story of Oisín and Niamh of the Golden Hair.

And this is the finished stamp.

The Country of the Young

I was recently asked to hunt out this rough I did several years ago for a stamp design based on "The Children of Lir".
The rough, complete with sticky tape and photocopied serrated edges, will be used on the cover of a book of academic essays edited by John Countryman and Kelly Matthews.
It is called "The Country of the Young: Interpretations of Youth and Childhood in Irish Culture" and publication by Four Courts Press is in April or May.
Below is the finished artwork that I did for the An Post stamp design.

Europa Stamps

Here are the sheetlets that I designed for the two Europa stamps.
I had very carefully included the face of the figure on the top right of the Gulliver sheet, but alas the printer has plonked a white box around the stamps obscuring the face.
On the whole though, they did a great job.

Two New Stamps: The Happy Prince and Gulliver’s Travels

An Post, the Irish Postal Service recently asked me to design a pair of stamps based on some of my best known work for the Europa series, whose theme this year is classic Children’s Books.
I revisited and reworked illustrations I had done for "The Happy Prince" by Oscar Wilde and "Gulliver’s Travels" by Jonathan Swift.
The stamps and first day cover have just been published and I'm really pleased with them.
I look forward to travelling to Cavan someday to stick the 2 inch Gulliver stamp on the wall beside the 8 foot tall original painting.

Stamps designs: Nollaig 1999

These are roughs for a set of stamps that I designed for Christmas 1999.
They are my favourites of all the stamps I have done for An Post, perhaps because my nephews and niece modelled as the children in the nativity play.

And here are the finished stamps.

Oisin and Niamh of the Golden Hair

This scene shows Oisin, son of Finn Mac Cumhaill, riding off across the waves to Tir na n'Og, with Niamh of the Golden Hair.


Here is the artwork and below is a sheet of the printed stamps.
It was certainly a big thrill to see my work reproduced as a stamp, and to think that they were being seen and used by millions of people.



I revisited both of these legends in the book The Names upon the Harp by Marie Heaney.

"The Children of Lir" and my other stamp designs

I'm trying to get the Stamps page on my website sorted and here are some of the images that will be going up there.
The first set I did were two mythological scenes.


This one shows the Children of Lir who were turned into swans by their wicked step mother. The rough is above and here is the finished artwork.

This was in the days before I had a computer and I had to painstakingly paint the lettering onto an acetate overlay. Those were the days.