Semaphore Tower

This is some of the history of the Tower and my reason for painting it.

The six paintings run in a numbered sequence from one to six and back to one again, forming a cycle of emotions and using the Tower as an object to portray this. preferably, if I had a wall space big enough I would set them like this. This is the silhouette view of the Tower I used to see almost every day on my way home when I lived by the D.A.R.T. railway line in Glenageary, near Dalkey village and about a mile or so from the Quarry, but my actual view was a lot farther away than this close up. It always struck me as looking "Lonely" all on it's only up there on the cliff-face, and it struck me that the tower looked like a closed hand with a fore finger pointing upward to the sky. It was this that prompted me to paint it. I remember years ago a tragic accident, (read below) "Sad" and now I had two emotions relating to the tower.
"Detached" and "Vunerable" were how I was just feeling at the time. The last two "Crack" (the ruin) and "Up" (the pointing finger) ended a series as such.
Does any of this make the tiniest bit of sense? Mail me. There is also a framed study of the ideas and original sketches. The six pieces are all 17 inches by 24 inches, are quarter inch, cut out pieces of board glued to three quarter inch board. The boards were then painted with Acrylic, printers Ink and varnish. They can only be purchased as a seven piece set, the six castle boards and the framed study.

As long as I have lived here in Dun Laoghaire I have always known this old ruin, which stands above the granite quarry, as "Dalkey castle", and only until I painted my "castles" and checked up on it's origin I discovered what it is and what it's original purpose was.

" The Telegraph Tower" or "Castle" above Dalkey Quarry was built in 1807 as a signalling station to communicate with the Martello Towers along the coast and with ships in the bay. Later it stored explosives for blasting in the quarries below. Even a quick examination of the quarry gives a good idea of the huge amount of stone which was removed - forever changing the aspect of Killiney Hill."

So the castle was never a castle as such, it was a semaphore (signal) or telegraph tower and was constructed specifically in this location, as it overlooks Dalkey Island, (with the closest of the Martello towers) the Irish sea, the entirety of Dublin bay and Howth, Killiney bay and the coast down to county Wicklow, and behind, the Dublin and Wicklow mountains, a 360 degree panorama. It's function was to watch for vessels approaching Ireland from the Irish sea and in the likely event of this happening it would signal the closest Martello tower, situated on Dalkey Island, which in turn would signal the other Martello towers dotted along the coastline and any ships out in the bay, to prepare for what was to follow. I could go into a bit of history here but that could take up to 5000 years to cover, (not enough Mbs on my site I'm afraid) so i'll leave the history lesson for another link later.
The hills up here hold many memories of ancient and modern tragedies including 3 people known to me personally. During the 70s some local boys were climbing and playing around there, and one of the boys was killed when part of the ruin wall collapsed. Also during the mining of the quarry a considerable amount of people died in accidents and its all of these forgotten tragedies that prompted me to paint this tower and give it some kind of feeling or emotion to remember the people who died up here.

A very nice lady (Bronagh) defined the term "Anthropomorphism" for me, defined in the Concise Oxford Dictionary: � n. "The attribution of human characteristics to a god, animal, or (in my case) an object.

I just wanted some people to know why I chose to do this piece as I couldn't really describe what I meant in words when asked, so it made little sense to anybody. It had a meaning for me personally at the time and it was a great outlet, AND I got to throw in a little local history. Unfortunately I could not go into much of my local history as it covers history back to the caveman, and the heritage in this area is endless. I will be adding history to the site as I build it up, starting with these two hills in Killiney, so please come back again for a visit. I vow to update every week, at least with my paintings and I will also be exhibiting my woodwork soon.