WALKING WITH BRIGID: A SEARCH FOR LIGHT AND STONE February 1st. St Brigid's Day. The threshold between winter and spring. I spent yesterday hiking Abbey Hill in the Burren with my sketchbook, and the day felt touched by something ancient. St Brigid—first a pagan goddess of fire, poetry, and creativity, later transformed into a Christian saint—presides over this moment in the year when light begins its slow return to Ireland. Imbolc, the old ones called it. The quickening.
The weather conspired perfectly: crisp, cool air beneath a crystalline blue sky, but with warmth in the sun that hinted at the coming season. Spring wasn't quite here yet, but you could feel it stirring—that peculiar Irish February quality where winter's grip loosens just enough to let you imagine what's coming.
The Burren on a day like this becomes something more than landscape. The limestone pavement catches the light differently in winter—sharper, clearer, almost luminous. I found myself drawn to the dry stone walls, those patient constructions that have divided these fields for centuries. Each stone placed by hand, each wall holding its own history. The textures under that bright winter light were extraordinary: weathered gray limestone against vivid green grass, shadow and substance, the geometry of human order meeting the wild irregularity of ancient rock.
I walked down to the Flaggy Shore too, where the Atlantic meets the stone. There's something about standing at that edge on St Brigid's Day—the goddess of threshold moments, of transitions—watching the waves work at the coast. The sea was that particular shade of blue-green that only happens under clear winter skies, and the light had that quality I'm always trying to capture in paint: bright but not harsh, revealing but somehow mysterious.
After hours of walking and sketching, I stopped at Café Hazel Mountain Chocolate—those turquoise doors against white walls under the deep blue sky felt like a small gift. Sometimes the artistic eye needs both the wild and the welcoming, the ancient and the present moment. I came home with a sketchbook full of notes and gestures: the way shadows pool in the grikes between limestone slabs, the unexpected warmth of winter grass in full sun, the rhythmic patterns of stone walls marching across hillsides. These sketches will live in my studio for weeks now, slowly transforming into something new—abstract impressions of this threshold day, when the goddess of creativity walks the land and spring whispers its first promises.
There's something deeply right about beginning February—the month that bridges winter and spring—by walking these hills with a sketchbook. Brigid, whether goddess or saint, presides over creativity and new life. What better way to honor her than to go looking for inspiration among the stones and light of the Burren? The paintings that come from this day will carry something of its clarity, its sense of threshold and possibility. They'll remember the way the limestone glowed under that particular winter sun, the way spring announced itself not in flowers but in the quality of light and air. This is what the Burren teaches: that beauty lives in the austere, that color blazes even in winter, that ancient stones have endless stories to tell. And on St Brigid's Day, when the light begins to return and creativity stirs, these are the lessons worth learning. --- *Images from my St Brigid's Day walk through the Burren and along the Flaggy Shore, February 1st, 2025*
