aodhan-art
I draw things ancient, magical and dead.Visual artist and photographer (he/him) based in Ireland.Art tagPhotography tagReblogs
122 posts
Latest Posts by aodhan-art
Mermay day 11: Guard
This mermaid isn't prone to sharing her food or, maybe, her love interest. Whatever she needs the drowned prince for.
Have you ever walked the lonesome hills and heard the curlews cry? Or seen the raven black as night upon a windswept sky? To walk the purple heather and hear the westwind cry To know that's where the rapparee must die... (The Pogues - Young Ned of the Hill)
Attention ladies, gentlemen, and every wonderful sentient being in between or neither: this artist here got locked tf out of his art insta, and since it's seemingly a prerequisite to have an art insta to communicate with people here in Ireland, I made a new one: right here. Please give me a follow if you don't mind me following you back!
A long overdue request from my Telegram channel - a technofantasy steampunk knight in his tent after a tournament. These are definitely the droids he was looking for.
Tonaroasty (Tóin an Róistigh, something along the lines of 'The bottom end of de Roche lands') is a medieval ghost village in Co. Galway I accidentally came across when out to shoot a stone circle on a barrow (I did take photos of it too). Judging from the onomastics (and from the satellite photos clearly showing rectangular foundations and what seems to be a cross-shaped church) it was an Anglo-Norman settlement, so built no later than 12th c. This also gives us a clue about how and why it ended. When the Black Death reached Ireland, the Gaels were in a more advantageous position than the Normans as they lived in less crowded conditions and did not have any religious prejudice about cats (hence, less rats and less fleas carrying plague). The Norman settlers were traditionally living in a more compact way, were in frequent contact with people from crowded castles, and the relationship between cats and folk Christianity soon turned to be rocky at best (to put it very mildly). Therefore, the plague was feasting on them at will, and it was one of the factors that contributed to the subsequent Gaelicisation of the surviving Anglo-Norman nobility. The plague hypothesis also explains quite neatly why the site has not been used for settlement again ever since.
i really dont like to post my irish pagan art, BUT i really wanna share with folks who have a similar love for this stuff, is there a way thats best for me to share this w you? /pos /nf
I would be delighted to see it! I can be found on Insta at @aodhan_ph (my art account there is half-dead and I'll probably restart it anyways).
The bog king coming together nicely.
I've read a 1912 compendium of criminal case studies featuring peasant girls and women from all corners of former Russian Empire as perpetrators, and I couldn't shake the thought of all those 16, 17, 18 year olds driven to killing themselves, their unwanted children, their husbands two or three times them older who were essentially r*ping them for years. Hence the little mermaid - a Slavic edition (in Slavic folklore, mermaids are a type of the undead). All violence starts with domestic and gender-based violence. Russia is a terrorist state and always has been. Down with empires.
Béal Feirste, 2025
FINALLY I’m making a comic (written by @sorrows-hand)
Dublin City, 2025
The Tomb - Menlo Castle The castle, originally built in 1569, was abandoned in 1910 after a fire broke out that incinerated everything (and I mean everything) inside and took the lives of two people. One of those people was the owners' daughter, who had a disability and hence was physically unable to run for her life. She was cremated alive, and her body was never found. After an unsuccessful search for the body the Blakes - the owners - left and never returned, leaving the castle that became their daughter's grave to the elements. It is reported to be haunted.
I did colour these two precious beacons of trans lesbian hope in the filthy grimdark pit of the whole Game-of-Thrones-meets-Silmarillion-and-they-spawn-an-abomination thing I'm writing
One of these Tuatha Dé Danann lesbian lovers is trans btw
One of these Tuatha Dé Danann lesbian lovers is trans btw
A character from the dark fantasy book I’m writing. Spoiler alert: sapphic romance incoming
Experimenting on lemons 1 - academic pencil lemon 2 - my normal lemon 3 - painterly lemon 4 - suprematist lemon 5 - expressionist lemon 6 - pointillist lemon
The shell is broken
Altars of the dying sun
There is a stone in my head, a flower in my throat
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