Glashedy (fine art print)

This small painting shows Glashedy Island rising from the Atlantic off the north-west coast of Inishowen. It is a familiar shape from Ballyliffin and Pollan Bay and from many viewpoints on the road towards Malin Head. Here I have painted it from the road between the Wee House of Malin and Banba's Crown, with Lenan Head lying beyond in shadow.

Its name comes from the Irish glas éadach, meaning 'green cloth', which suits the grass-covered, flat-topped form. The island has carried other names too; in the early seventeenth century it was known as Seale Island and appeared in surveys of Inishowen.

Stories have accumulated around it over the centuries - poitín making, difficult crossings and shipwrecks, including the James Cooke in 1841.

Long before any of those stories, the island was already ancient. Its hard quartzite belongs to the old metamorphic geology of Inishowen, later shaped by ice, wind and sea. From the mainland it can feel both close and unreachable: a weathered piece of the landscape left standing offshore.