In my little walk-about after lunch today, I went into a building I’ve walked past several times since I’ve been here. I had no idea what it was, so I had no real inclination to swerve off my path to check it out.

Today, though, from the direction by which I was approaching it, I saw an open door and a little sign referring to gifts. Not having anything else on the calendar until 8:00 tonight, I decided to pop in.

Turns out it is the studio/gallery of a semi-local artist, Leo Quinlan.

I say semi-local because he was born and lived in (or near) Galway, but spends about six months of the year here in Waterville and his dad was from here.

I like to support local artists, so I looked around till I found an original that I liked and which I purchased (see below). Sort of unfortunately, the one I picked was actually by his daughter, Elaine, and not him. Oh well! (If you’d like to see more of her work, you can find her on Instagram at @elainequinlanart – I can’t find a regular Web link to give you for her.)

Anyway, we had a lovely chat. He had served in the Irish military back in the day and was quite happy to hear I am originally from Newfoundland. He regaled me with stories of a fellow he had met from NL when he was serving in the military somewhere. (He told me where, but it escapes me for the moment.)

We talked a fair bit about painting, too, and he was quite motivational to me. I get too much in my own head (as I think I may have mentioned in a previous post), thinking that everything needs to be perfect right out the gate.

That is such a bad approach to take with probably everything. It can be paralytic and make you afraid to even try.

I’m very glad to have run into him and will take his advice of getting lots of “brush mileage” in.

If this spurt of motivation stays with me after I get home, I might even finish a painting that I started well over a year ago!

You never know when or how that spark is going to be lit… Ain’t life grand??

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