Alan Raggett Studio

I’ve been thinking about this suite of paintings a lot, right now. They were started in 2020, during the first Trump presidency, Covid, BLM and when the world started to burn, Australia and US. 6 years later, currently major fires in Kerry, Tipperary and Dublin/Wicklow…other affected counties of Cork, Laois and Kildare. 130,000 evacuated across Spain and France…and Europe prepares for another heatwave.
We need to educate ourselves on what’s coming down the track…and fast, education is how we change it.
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So I’m aiming to make 400 studies, 8”x10” before I judge anything. That means no judging that my values and colour mixing is off…or any such talk. I won’t bore you by showing you all of them, as they will be studies of me learning how to paint faoin spéir.
1.5 hours at lough Barfinnihy on an 8”x10” primed birch ply panel.
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Today was the first day out painting Faoin Spéir, or Plein air for the rest of the world. I only had an hour in the mountains above Kenmare, but it was amazing! Painting the landscape in the open air is completely new to me, but the constant changing, the wind, flying worms…trying not to think about this part!!🤢It’s like being back in school doing a subject that you really liked, I haven’t had that feeling for quite some time! I need to work on my colour mixing, values, colour as value and blocking in…so that’s what I’m going to do!
This was 1 hour on a 8” x 10” primed birch ply panel using a homemade viewfinder.
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So here’s a pochade box that I made yeaterday as part of my new Plein Air set up…although I feel if your painting outside in Ireland you should be painting Faoin Spéir. A while back I entered the Sky Landscape Artist of the year, and got to the last 40, got flown to England to paint for a day but that was to be the end of the road for me. The standard was unbelievably high…and I’d never really painted outside before…seriously outside my comfort zone, so after the rejection eased, I took it as a win and sat back to see what I could learn from it.
I realised that day that I made 4 different brushstrokes that I’d never made before, marks I don’t think I’d have ever made in the studio. So here goes nothing…the coming weeks will be more pushing outside the comfort zone, with a view to continually inform my practice.
Always the reluctant landscape painter!_____________________________________

I’ve been thinking about this painting today, titled - be good if you can - it was based on a postcard of the Park Hotel Kenmare that I bought from a collector in France, that was originally posted to Clonskeagh, Dublin from Kenmare in 1904.

Just to remind that life is short - be good if you can - if not, it can’t be helped, I suppose!
Yours anyway

—Be good if you can - became the title of the show and also inspired the beautiful cards in the second last shot which was designed and printed in collaboration with Lucy and Robert at Lucy & Robert Carter where my solo took place in 2024. Sure look, be good if ya can!
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I was really pleased to be able to get to the opening of Taylor Galleries Summer Group Show last night, alongside the openings of Siobhan McDonald and Sian Costello
I’m even more pleased to be showing alongside the immense talent in this building. I was first brought to Taylor in the mid 90’s by my one time mentor, all time friend, the late ..and I remember thinking someday I’m going to show here…thank you and all the team Taylor Galleries for the opportunity
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1. Mise agus an phéintéireacht
2. Mé féin
3. Bernadette Kiely
4. Nick Miller
5.
6. Martin Gale
7-8. Sian Costello
9. Impromptu Goth meeting, the maestro 𝔈𝔞𝔪𝔬𝔫𝔫 𝔐𝔞𝔵𝔴𝔢𝔩𝔩 and Arlene Caffrey - Performance Artist
10. Pat Harris
11. Ann Quinn
12. Inga Ryan
13-15 Siobhan McDonald
16. No Darling, it could never possibly reach us, oil paint and oil bar on Belgian linen, 140 x 100cm, 2026
17-20. Close up detail
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I’ve been thinking about these two paintings lately, there’re sisters, or brothers…definitely siblings, though raised separately! Yellow, gray, pink, blue and silver sit well together for me and they’re colours that come up again and again in my work.
I didn’t know they were siblings, I kind of discovered that fact by mistake, almost like an overheard conversation, like a snippet you hear when walking past friends sitting chatting on a park bench, or in the isle in the supermarket…just enough to know exactly what they were talking about, enough to make you smile to yourself…that’s how I found out.

They both came from the following passage I read during the research phase of this work..I’d forgotten it until I found out they were siblings.

- As more and more people were admitted to the workhouses, and as a result, with them came many contagious diseases.
“What was designed for good purposes becomes active evil and the relief is not relief but a delusion, fatal to the recipitians” The workhouses became huge hospitals and like the clergy and doctors in the outside world, those who ministered to the inmates soon contracted diseases and died.
The two main sickness were Typhus and “Relapsing fever” or as it is referred to by the Irish “An Fiabhrais Bui.”
To improve the conditions and stop the spread of diseases the architect to the Commissioners demanded that ventilation should be improved. Doors were to be pierced with circular holes cleanly formed, top and bottom. Ventilators were to be widely installed and panes of glass in windows were to be replaced by pierced zinc “which would occasion a circulation of air and give very little admission to driving rain.
Where zinc could not be conveniently procured the old tin cans of the poorhouses could be beaten flat and punched with holes one-tenth of an inch in diameter and ½ inch apart.

Clúdaigh an fiabhras buí an talamh / the yellow fever covered the ground
Oil paint and oil bar on Belgian linen
51.5 x 41 x 2 cm
2025

Báistí Since / Zinc Rain
Oil paint and oil bar on Belgian linen
51.5 x 41 x 2 cm
2025
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l’ve been thinking about this painting a lot lately, more than I normally think about my paintings. Usually, my fascination with them comes to an end and we go our separate ways, I go back to work, and the painting goes into storage. You’ll appreciate my sinicism.
But this painting has been holding firm in my mind, it lives there with a mini-series of paintings called the King of a Fake Empire that I made about 4 or five years ago, Teigh ag obair sa sneachta was born in a very similar fashion. It led its own making, and I tried to stay out of the way as much as possible. Staying out of a painting’s way is always a game of push and pull.
I was thinking about the traditional Irish tune ‘Who’ll come fight in the snow’ it’s a slip jig, a slow jig, that I was trying to learn on the tin whistle a few years ago
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Téigh ag obair sa sneachta
Oil paint and oil bar on birch ply panel
29 x 20 x 2 cm
2025
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#1847