While Lahiff’s tractors move across the field, as father teaches son, the blackbirds and gulls rise high into the sky.

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I painted this piece after the first time I witnessed ‘hay being made while the sun shone’ on the O’Neill fields. These are the same fields that, in 1920, saw young, injured soldiers scurrying across to the back of the property and over the stone wall to be helped by Dr. Michael Hillery, father of Paddy Hillery, the future President of Ireland. This painting is a tribute to the Rineen Ambush and the Irish Uprising. It is also in memory of the labourers who worked these lands and bore the brunt of the unkind actions of their landlord, Mrs. Bernadette Moroney.

“We rise again in the faces of our children

We rise again in the voices of our song

We rise again in the waves out on the ocean

And then, we rise again”

The Rankin Family