DOUBLE-TAKE DIVERSION: This painting here is simply called ‘Mother and Child’. However, everyone sees the mother and almost nobody sees the child. Until it is explained to them.

See the little curve at the chest? View that as a toddler’s bottom, poking out of trousers that are slipping down. And his arms are around Mammy’s neck. And his head is obscuring her face. See it now?

HELSINKI: I spent a year in Helsinki around 2019/20, and it was then I started painting in earnest. One of the first images to emerge was this fellow, my ‘Cold fish’. Fitting indeed, given the bone-crushing chills of the Baltic Sea winds on the coast those winter nights. ‘Cold fish’ was the first painting I ever sold.

The bitter sea winds were, however, more than balanced out by the many warm people I met in Helsinki. Alvin, Tom, Mari, Anu, Satu, Nick, and many more I miss still. The second painting below is ‘Helsinki Church’, a painting inspired by the Mikael Agrikola church, named after the man who, amongst many other things, brought about the first Finnish edition of the Bible. I stand to be corrected, but that’s how I remember it at time of writing.

Cold fish (2020). Helsinki church (2020). Acrylic on card.

CITIES: Lately I have been painting scenes of the land. But in fact when I first look at the big white blank sheet in front of me, I often imagine cityscapes.

A great city should be crowded and lively, and almost annoying. The cityscapes in the cluster below came from my head, not modelled on anywhere.

Yet, I fancy one (bottom-left) suggest a shadow of Edinburgh in the days of Burke and Hare? Its one of my favourites, but before I knew it would be, a chap from Italy who lives in Brussels bought it from me. I was thrilled at the time. Thinks me: ‘So the first sale was not a fluke!’ He bought it. He took it. I miss it. If I could find him I would probably buy it back.

Clearly, whatever about me reaching some level of aesthetic achievement, my reluctance to sell will be an obstacle to reaching an equivalent such level commercially.

The red painting bottom-right, which I never really named, might have a flavour of Ennistymon, a picturesque town in the west of Ireland. A Chinese man bought it at the RDS ArtSource art show in 2023. I think he was a visitor. So, who knows, perhaps that piece now hangs in China? A curiosity is that I had painted it on a piece of wood I found in the street in Brussels. The wood seemed to be the panel backing for an antique mirror, and written on the back was a hand-scrawled message in pen, simply ‘Martin, 1913’. Given the year, its hard not to wonder who that was and what became of him.

The third painting. Well, someone has said it was the spit of Bergen in Norway. Never saw the place, but I doubt it. Well, that painting now lives in Warsaw, Poland. It caught the eye of someone while I had it on display in a little stall I had in the Blackrock market back in 2023. I had painted that scene on a big heavy long slab of wood, so it definitely did not fly to Poland in the suitcase.

Anyway, overall, a well-travelled batch.

From top, clockwise: Port town, River town, Old Town (2021-22)

Sticking with cities, did I ever tell you that I love Brussels? It is a wonderful, gorgeous, compact, neighbourly, sometimes surreal, and inexplicably efficient, city.

I am feeling guilty now as I write this, because I should give this unique city more attention in my painting. But the cityscape and architecture, throughout, is so intimidatingly beautiful and complex that I would be embarrassed to even try. The only efforts I have made are of the tram at night. And an affectionate sketch of a crowded metro carriage.

Left: A Brussels tram. Above: Brussels metro

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