Portrait of a Mountain in Spring (fine art print)

Portrait of a Mountain in Spring is Slieve Sneacht, the mountain at the centre of Inishowen that I grew up seeing from roads, fields and windows.

Spring changes it gradually. The lower ground greens, the light returns and more colour appears on the slopes, while traces of winter can still hold on higher up.

Painting a mountain you have known all your life is different from painting an unfamiliar view. Its outline is already stored in you. It becomes a marker of home, distance and direction, and a quiet way of measuring the seasons.

The Irish name, Sliabh Sneachta, means 'mountain of snow', and tradition says snow could remain on the summit well into spring.

I think of this less as a record of one view than as a portrait of an old companion, carrying weather and memory across its changing face.