I am in Bray, in Co.Wicklow, for a full week, while my mother, Cinnie, gallivants around Connemara on a painting holiday. It’s cold and and a little wet in the west of the country, and in Bray it’s also pretty cold. But I am having a really pleasant week with my younger daughter Liv, enjoying all that Bray and its Seafront offers.

Thursday 30th May

I feel the urge to paint, but am also a little reluctant to dodge the showers outside and risk getting cold, so I raid my mother’s at studio in her absence and sketch a few tubes of watercolour. I figure it is a good subject to demonstrate how I draw directly in pen, so I film what I am doing and post it to YouTube. There are lots of ways to draw accurately, but when I am drawing anything from life I like to go straight in with ink, measuring by eye as I go. It’s not as accurate as it would be with lots of preliminary drawing, but it’s usually more full of life, and definitely more spontaneous and fun. You can see the process here: https://youtu.be/ikfQ9xp3Sys?si=uMGyimbMDaRDaRI3

Later, I receive a call from an old friend and colleague who is a super botanical artist. She’s calling from Greece, where she’s been teaching a workshop in a remote part of the mainland near Athens. She says it’s a wonderful place and totally unspoilt, but a little inaccessible (which is why it’s unspoilt, of course), and that I should consider teaching a workshop there. I am interested: however, in an ideal world I would have a dear little Person Friday whose delight it would be to research and organise all my teaching engagements abroad. (Talking of which: would you like to come to France in August next year? I will be teaching in the foothills of the Pyrenees from 23rd to 30th August 2025. Look up Atelier Clos Mirabel and see if it takes your fancy.)

Friday 31st May

My youngest and I drive to Dublin and then back across the country early on Friday morning. Liv has a phone interview for a job at 3.00pm for Brown Thomas. This is a fancy department store with branches in Galway and Dublin. When Liv was little, she and I would go upstairs to the ladies’ fashion department on the first floor just to gaze at the beautiful clothes, marvel at the quality of the cut and fabric and feel the cloth. I don’t know if that played a part in Liv becoming a keen sewer who thinks nothing of designing a garment, but it must have. Liv is meeting her girlfriends from university for brunch, so my brother and I go for coffee near his home in the north inner city. We stop outside a converted railway carriage on a small sunlit plaza behind the Church pub, where Arthur Guinness was baptised. It is lovely to sit in the sunshine at one of the little round tables in front of the railway-themed coffee place. The plaza is built on what was once the cemetery for the church, and is bustling with Dubliners going about their business. It’s the usual Dublin Northside mix of colourful characters, with whom I became familiar during the writing of Dublin In Sketches And Stories, when I spent a year on the streets, sketching what I saw and recording conversations with Dubliners (you can buy a copy here: https://roisincure.com/product/dublin-in-sketches-and-stories-by-roisin-cure/. )

Allow me to introduce a few Dubliners from that plaza last Friday:

• A couple of young men in high-viz vests, setting out a cordoned-off square area, carrying huge sellophane-wrapped lumps, which turn out to be enormous tan-coloured teddies. I see a sign that says “Teddy Bears’ Picnic Today”.
• A young woman in her twenties who asks if she can pat my dog. She asks his name and is polite and nice.
• A large young woman on the far side of the plaza, with long bleached hair, in skin-tight, shiny lemon leggings and matching top, with a mottled animal print on it. There is a row of stone benches positioned against a hedge that surrounds the plaza. She and her boyfriend are on the stone bench. The girl is facing her boyfriend, straddling his lap: my brother remarks that she reminds him of a boa constrictor, and that she’s even dressed like one.
• A pair of teenage boys at the table next to us, in grey tracksuits and sharp haircuts, smoking a ridiculously long spliff. One has feet that I am sure have not stopped growing.
• Two Gardaí in high vis, who stand opposite the teenage boys, keeping the peace, and who take no notice whatever of the illegal drugs they can see and smell perfectly clearly. The boys make no attempt to hide it. I try not to be bothered by the horrible smell.
• Another young woman who asks if she can pat my “animal” (not dog), does so, and says “hello stinky” to Reuben. She does not meet my gaze, nor interact with me again. After patting Reuben she approaches the weed-smokers and counsels them in a serious monotone to only drink orange juice and not mango juice when they smoke weed, and explains the science behind this advice: unfazed, the younger asks if she’d like a drag. She says she cannot, as she is on the clock.
• A scruffy young man who carries his sleeping bag with him and speaks to the young boys.
• Three separate pit bull terriers in the care of three owners. They are sleek and beautiful (the dogs, not the owners).

The feeling in the plaza, despite the homelessness, the drugs, the lewd behaviour and the dangerous dogs, is peaceful and calm, and I feel it would be even if the Gardaí weren’t there. As we sip our oat flat whites, the subject of taxes comes up: my brother has strong feelings (I can’t remember what, exactly) and I say that not only do I not object to paying taxes, but that I am proud to, because it means that I am making a living as an artist. My brother sees my point, and adds that it’s our taxes that mean we can have coffee in peace and security, that the people around us have enough to eat and are not on the rampage wielding meat hooks.

I collect Liv in the city centre after her brunch, and we make our way towards the M50 that leads to the motorway to Galway, with the idea that we can stop somewhere for Liv to have her phone interview. The road signs directing us to the M50 have been written by someone with a twisted sense of humour, and we soon find ourselves a long way from the best route, in thick traffic, on this hot summer’s afternoon. Liv is starting to get tense: we agree that a car park will be our only option at this juncture. We pull in out of the traffic and stop outside a convenience store. I have been told that I must leave the car for the interview; that I cannot make eye contact with Liv while out of the car; that I cannot have my phone (Liv will be using it for her interview); that I must not approach the car to see if the interview is over. I am obliged to sit in the convenience store for 25 minutes. My sketchbook is totally full, so I cannot sketch, and I have no phone, so I cannot scroll. I perch on a stool facing the car park and realise I am directly in line of sight with Liv, so I move, leaving me obliged to listen to two young teenage girls roaring indiscretions about their respective love lives, shriek with laughter and generally wear my ears off. I buy a physical newspaper, the reputable broadsheet my parents have always bought, and I am taken aback by the poor standard of writing.

I see Liv get out of the car. She has had to keep the windows rolled up to keep the traffic noise down, and she is a deep shade of beetroot in the hot car. Reuben, who has been allowed to stay, gets a bottle of water squirted on his fluffy white fur, but doesn’t appear grateful. We hit the road, and after an hour the phone rings. Liv has got the job.

No sooner are we back in Galway – it’s now 6.30pm – than I have to turn around and go out again. It is the meet-and-greet for the first day of Kinvara Plein Air 2024, in the beer garden in Tully’s of Kinvara. There is live traditional music being played, people are sipping glasses of wine and the mood is very happy.

Saturday 1st June

Day Two of the festival. My first day of teaching. I meet my group and give them my spiel, I mean debrief. We get up to make our way to the quay in the centre of the village, but before we leave the grassy area where we’re having the debrief we lose one of our number, who has taken a funny turn and collapsed. The poor thing is not well enough to attend the day’s sketching. (I see her work in an exhibition a few days later and she is a beautiful artist.)

I start with a demo of the pretty green boats tied up at the quay…

…and the day is spent in pleasant company and warm sunshine, although the air is still cold. The owner of the boats, a German fisherman named Rainer Krause, arrived in Kinvara in the early 60s. He has died during the week, and at 3.00pm his funeral cortège passes slowly along the quay. A piper sits on a stool he has borrowed from one of my sketchers, and plays a slow air to accompany Rainer’s last journey. The street is lined with people on both sides. We have offered to move away from the quay, but a friend of Rainer’s, also a fisherman, says Rainer would have like us to be there. It is fitting that it is his beautiful boats we are drawing.

“Three cheers for Rainer!” cries the friend as the hearse passes by. I feel emotional.

My workshop facilitator is a marvellous woman called Benita. As well as assisting me, she is partaking in the workshop: I give her a few tips for her sketch and she is thrilled with her results, her first-ever watercolour. I am proud as punch to see her pleasure in her achievement.

The sketching day finishes at 4pm and I sketch the boats again.

Sunday 2nd June

I am to lead a paint-out today, and we meet outside Linalla Ice Cream at the Flaggy Shore, a little way south of Kinvara. I sit on the shore to sketch the shoreline, but the tide comes in too fast to allow me to stay long. I finish the sky from the safety of the road, high above the beach, which is now under water.

When I have finished I spot my new friend Hillary, who has flown all the way from Cambridge, MA, to be with us for the festival. I love to meet my students and it’s probably no coincidence that I usually end up becoming friends with them, as they are pre-selected to like me, if they have come a long way to see me, and I them, if they like what I do in the first place. I set my stool in the grass next to Hillary and we are soon joined by other lovely sketchers, some of whom are there to paint with me, others who are just there to paint. The craic is mighty. We sketch cows, fields and shoreline, some in watercolour, some in oil.

Back in Kinvara village, later in the afternoon, there is an auction of freshly-created artwork to raise money for two charities. One is local (Kinavara Alive) and one is international (Médécins Sans Frontières). I have decided to donate my sketch of Rainer’s boats, the second one I made, but I cannot stand there on the quay as the sketch goes under the hammer. It will be too mortifying if no one wants it: I rarely sell work, and the constant lack of success in this department does knock your confidence. My confidence as a teacher is very high, and my confidence as a seller of art is very low. More on that in a minute…

I lurk at the periphery of the auction, my ears straining, and I realise to my relief that more than one person is bidding for my sketch. The hammer goes down and a sum has been made for the charities. When I go to the building to which all the sold work has been transferred to remove the sketch from the sketchbook I discover that the buyer is none other than my new friend Hillary, and my feeling of discomfort turns to pleasure.

Monday 3rd June

The last day of the festival will take place on the grounds of Thoor Ballylee, where the poet WB Yeats had a home in the 1920s: he restored a tower house built sometime in the medieval period (no idea when). “Thoor” is supposed to mimic the pronunciation of the Irish word “túr” meaning tower. It’s not quite right: there is no sound in English which matches the soft T sound in Irish, which is between TH and T in English.

I greet my students and send them off to create little vignettes of the house and its grounds, as, I tell them, it is redolent with history. I do my rounds, and then two special things happen.

A student asks if I teach online. I tell her I have just finished my live classes for good but that I have nearly two hundred classes available on my website that she can download (or become a member for €19.99 per month to access them all: I didn’t say that, but I am saying it to you, now). Another student is sitting with us.

“The classes are amazing,” says the second student (she’s been with me for a few years now). “You can do them anywhere. I have just been through chemo, and I did them while I was in hospital. And she has a podcast about sketching!”

I feel extremely honoured. Then she turns to me.

“And when I wanted to tune out of all the noise and bustle in the hospital,” she adds, “I stuck your podcast in and listened to that. You got me through it. No exaggeration.”

I really don’t know what to say, and it strikes me that there are many ways to be an artist, even if no one has your work on their walls.

“I stopped doing the podcast when I started doing YouTube seriously,” I say, “but I feel inspired to take it up again.”

“You don’t have to,” says this lovely woman. “The resource is right there.”

I feel a sense of pride as I make my way to the next person.

Here’s the second thing that happened. The next woman tells me that she has felt intimidated all weekend, that she has felt like all these easels and so on are not her style. That she doesn’t belong. I tell her my story, of how I was rejected about 75 times – I have done a rough calculation – by agents, publishers, galleries, grant administrators and everyone in a position to say yay or nay to a proposal, and that over the years I frequently found myself in tears of frustration. I tell her that at the age of 44 and by pure chance I discovered urban sketching, which brought me joy, creative satisfaction and a career, but that despite all my success as a teacher and published author I am still rejected by the afore-mentioned gatekeepers all the time. I tell her how it is baffling to me that a number one bestselling author is still rejected for every single proposal – all of them – to this day, and that it has only been the connection I have made with the public, people just like me, that have spurred me to go on with confidence, and that even now I am not the type of artist with an easel who sells work, because I still sell almost nothing, despite having been a professional artist selling work since the age of fourteen; I tell her that it the sheer love of drawing and painting, whatever I like, that draws me irresistably to my pens and paper and paint all the time. I tell her there is no one way to be an artist and there is no rule that says she has to use an easel or oil paint or to paint scenery or traditional subjects. That she must make art exactly as it pleases her and no one else.

Then I leave her, her beautiful eyes shining with restored enthusiasm for the art she knows she wants to create. I walk back along the road past the tower, and I see a dead bug on the ground. It is what I want to sketch, so I sketch it.

The festival wraps up on Monday evening with an exhibition of work done over the three days, and many pieces sell quickly. One such piece that is snapped up is the one done of the quay by my new friend Benita, her first-ever. She is thrilled. I want to buy it myself, but am literally five seconds too late – as I am scanning the price list for the number of the piece, a woman beside me is already asking about it. She gets there before me. I take comfort in the fact that Benita and I have plans to sketch together in Kinvara in future.

You can see my video account of Kinvara Plein Air Festival 2024 here: https://youtu.be/28a2qj5lYXE?si=7zXIWr4B5H6DVn0h – I hope you enjoy it, and consider coming to this amazing festival next year.

I will see you there…as long as the oganisers still want someone there who doesn’t quite know which end is up when it comes to an easel.