Scenes and images from the poems of Seamus Heaney Cartinpaintings

Larger Thumbnails of all 24 paintings are on this page.

In his poem Keeping Going Seamus Heaney paints a picture of his young brother Hugh pretending to play the bagpipes. I could always see him or a least, could see a younger version of Dan Heaney (turned out to be Hugh) striding along, chair over the shoulder for the bagpipes and a whitewash brush dangling from his waist for a sporran; all in short trousers. I always wanted to see it painted. In retirement I learned to paint a bit and this image was irresistible. I updated the clothing . Then a Digging pen looked like a Heaney logo and that gave me my next painting: Digging. Nine paintings later I had enough for an exhibition with Arts Care and later with the Linen Hall Library, a venue much loved by Seamus Heaney. There is now another eleven in the series and photos of them are now on this site. Some prints available in the original size or a bit cropped. The first twelve were quickly acquired by collectors.