Postcards

I am well known in Beara for making postcards. Rarely does it make financial sense to do them, but then ask any die hard postcard producer if he/she is really doing it for the money. I suppose there is something about wanting to show off my work that makes me do it, take a nice picture and show it off. I suppose it all stems from when I worked in a car components factory in Oxford, printing pictures at home and putting them up on the welding booths for people to look at. Back then I was trying to liven up the lives of bored factory workers on long and tedious shifts. When I started making postcards I did them because no-one had approached any of the subjects I tried and one soon learns why. My first was a dawn shot of the Ballycrovane Ogham Stone, some people complained that they could not see the colour of the stone because it was basically a black monolith against the dawn sky. They did not realise that I had deliberately got up a 4am to do the shot, and the artists here loved it. So I did more stones, before realising that while there is some interest in the stones of Beara, they don't sell as postcards or prints. I did a series called the Beara Stones Series, Ballycrovane, The Hag, Castletownbere, Ardgroom and Uragh, and they took awhile to sell. I started making postcards of lighthouses back in 1994 as a business venture, and soon realised that while I enjoyed making them it was going to be far from easy making money at it. I guess us artists don't make good businessmen, and I am no exception. Only just recently I was over in Dingle selling my new postcard # 95 and wishing I was doing something else. I hate going up to people in shops and trying to sell my wares. Anyway, below are some of my postcards since I started in 1993, enjoy!