The Chicken Legged Workshop - Art by Justine G. Cappelli

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The Chicken Legged Workshop - Art by Justine G. Cappelli

Visual Artist 🍀Exploring mythology, identities, beliefs The Chicken-Legged Workshop
Art by Justine G. Cappelli. All rights reserved.

Cappelli
Independent visual artist based in Monaghan, Ireland. Contact: https://www.thechickenleggedworkshop.com/connect-with-me
Website: https://www.thechickenleggedworkshop.com/
All artworks, texts and images © Justine G.

27/08/2026

The opening of my first solo exhibition is now less than a week away!! So here is a little reminder, in case you are around Monaghan next Wednesday and would like to come :)

We’ll have w**e and cheese from 6.30 pm, then a wonderful opening talk by Dr Lauren Cassidy at 7 pm, and hopefully lots of discussions afterwards! I think it’s going to be a really lovely evening, and I would be very happy to see you there ❤️

Wednesday 2 September, at the Garage Theatre in Monaghan.

https://www.garagetheatre.com/event/art-exhibition-by-justine-guittonny-cappelli/

24/08/2026

Hello everyone! Here is Danu again, this time in a detail from the third panel of the large commission I have been working on. After Youth and Grief, this panel is about Emergence, and here I wanted to represent Danu with life.

Very little survives about Danu in the medieval Irish material. Even her familiar name reaches us mostly through the Tuatha Dé Danann, so there is no complete story for me to illustrate. Instead, I am working with the traces that remain, the later interpretations that have gathered around her, and what people place in her today.

For this panel, I wanted life to move through her. Leaves spread across her skin, the lines of her hair continue into water, hills & winding paths, while she holds a small and still fragile beginning between her hands. The same spirals appear in her body and throughout the landscape, as though every part of the painting were caught in the same slow movement of forming, growing and changing.

After the inward, quiet space of the first two panels, Danu is beginning to open towards the living world again. Everything is moving, although some things still need to be held very carefully.

The ravens continue their journey beside her too, carrying memory from one panel to the next, witnessing what changes or remains.

21/08/2026

Macha: Níos Gasta ná na Capaill
Faster than the Horses

Today's tiny painting is Macha, again only 9.4 cm in diameter

I painted her pregnant, surrounded by the horses she was forced to race against in Noínden Ulad. Her husband had boasted that she could outrun the king's horses and, despite asking them to wait until after she had given birth, Macha was made to prove it. She won the race, and gave birth to twins at the finish.

I wanted to paint her just before all of that, still pregnant, with the horses gathered around her.

Original watercolour and gold leaf, 9.4 cm diameter.

20/08/2026

Brigid: Coimeádaí na Tine
Keeper of the Fire

Another tiny Brigid, just 9.4 cm in diameter.

This one is for the beginning of autumn, when the air starts to cool and, here in Ireland at least, we know the warm bright days are mostly behind us. Brigid holds a small flame close, surrounded by the greens and rust colours of the changing season.

Original watercolour and gold leaf, 9.4 cm diameter.

19/08/2026

Brigid: Coimeádaí na bhFocal

This one is tiny, only 9.4 cm in diameter.

I painted Brigid here as the poet, with her book, surrounded by green and gold. I liked the idea of making her very small, almost like a little icon you would keep close, and a piece you really have to come near to look at properly.

Coimeádaí na bhFocal means Keeper of Words.

Poetry is one of the domains associated with Brigid in Irish tradition, and this is the aspect I wanted to paint here, Brigid with words, reading, keeping them close.

Original watercolour and gold leaf, 9.4 cm diameter.

16/08/2026

Hello everyone :) Today I am showing you a detail of Grief, the second panel of the commission The Awakening of Danu.

When I work from Irish mythology, I try to separate what the texts tell from what was reconstructed later. With Danu that limit appears quickly. We know her mostly through the name of the Tuatha Dé Danann. The Lebor Gabála Érenn speaks of Danand (or Donann), who is connected to Danu even if the identification is not simple, and makes her the mother of Brian, Iuchar and Iucharba. In Oidheadh Chloinne Tuireann, the three brothers kill Cian, Lugh’s father, then have to pay the éraic for his death. They come back mortally wounded, Lugh refuses them the pigskin that could heal them… they die. Their father Tuireann laments over them until he dies from it, and their sister Ethne cries over their departure. But their mother is just absent from the story.

That does NOT mean there was once a passage about Danu’s grief and that it was lost. Yet this silence is there, and I used it to imagine Danu’s grief. Neo-mythmaking allows me to add this contemporary reading to the story.

In this detail, Danu is folded into the landscape. I wanted the landscape to keep its colours and its movement, because grief can leave someone unable to move without stopping what continues around them.

I will add the link to my Substack series about grief and Irish mythology in the comments. If you use Irish mythology to face grief, and if you feel like it, you can share that small piece of your story here or send it to me privately.

I ask everyone to receive these stories with kindness. People’s grief is not a debate of ideas.

11/08/2026

Hello everyone! Here is my latest painting, Áine at Lough Gur.

Áine is often associated with the brightness of summer and with sovereignty, and many of the traditions surrounding her are rooted in Co. Limerick, around Lough Gur and Cnoc Áine at Knockainey. The story that led to this painting is much quieter. It was recorded locally in the Schools’ Collection in the 1930s.

The account says that, on “the sixth night of the full moon”, known to older people as “All-Heal”, the sick were brought close to the waters of Lough Gur so that the moonlight could shine on them. If they had not recovered by the eighth or ninth day of the moon, they would hear the Ceol Sídhe, the music of the sí, sung or played by Áine, described there as the bean sí and spirit of the lake, to comfort them as they approached death.

In the painting, Áine sits beside the lake and the scene seems almost completely still. The gilding is spread through the moon, the water and the landscape, although it is difficult to catch in a photograph. In front of the original painting, the light moves as you move, some lines disappear whilst others suddenly become visible.

I wanted that tension between stillness and movement, because death concerns the living too. The image remains still, while the gilding only comes fully alive through the movement of the person looking at it, so the presence of a living body becomes part of the work, even though the painting speaks of the end of life.

03/08/2026

Hello everyone! I’m very happy to share my newest painting: Ingin Baidbi, “the daughter of Badb”.

As always, your likes, comments and shares help my work reach so many more people, thank you for being here 😊

In the Oidheadh Con Culainn, a later version of the story of Cú Chulainn’s death, the hero leaves Emain Macha and, at Béal Átha na Foraire, a ford not far from the stronghold, encounters a pale-skinned, fair-haired young woman. She is weeping and lamenting as she washes and wrings his spoils and armour, torn and red with blood.

Cathbad names her as ingin Baidbi and explains that she is announcing Cú Chulainn’s fall before Medb’s great host and the sorcery of the children of Cailitín. Her mourning comes before his death, she is grieving for something that has not happened yet, but which they both now know is inevitable. Cú Chulainn continues towards the battle all the same.

The text keeps an ambiguity which I really love. Badb is closely connected with the Morrígan, but is this woman truly her daughter, Badb herself, or an appearance of the Morrígan in the form of the Washer at the Ford? I chose to keep that uncertainty in the title.

In my painting, I moved away from the literal act of washing to stay with her grief. The dark red ground evokes the blood and the water of the ford, while the night blue and the large pale crescent hold the scene in the silence before the battle. The crows recall Badb and the Morrígan, the wolf simply stays close to her, and the gilded lines still run through this landscape of mourning.

I hope you will like her 🖤

01/08/2026

Happy Lughnasadh everyone! 🌾

Lughnasadh, or Lúnasa, traditionally marks the beginning of the harvest season, and it was once a time for great gatherings, with fairs, games, feasting and all sorts of community business taking place. In Irish myth, Lugh is said to have established funeral games in memory of his foster-mother Tailtiu, who died after clearing land so it could be cultivated.

I shared my paintings of both Lugh and Tailtiu quite recently, so it feels as though we have already been slowly making our way towards Lughnasadh here for a little while. Today, I thought I would use the occasion to show you something entirely new, a first glimpse of a series of six paintings which I am currently creating as part of a commission, called The Awakening of Danu.

I still have quite a lot of work ahead of me, and I am not going to reveal the whole story just yet, but here is Danu still sleeping within the landscape, while around her the awakening has perhaps already begun. I am very happy to finally share a little part of it with you today 😊

Happy Lughnasadh!

30/07/2026

A little preview before the opening ✨

SEANSCÉALTA, GUTHANNA BEO, What Still Lives Here is finally up at the Garage Theatre in Monaghan.

The exhibition brings together paintings inspired by three of the major cycles of Irish mythology, the Mythological Cycle, the Ulster Cycle and the Fenian Cycle. Through these figures and stories, I wanted to explore how mythology continues to live and change, how people make it their own too, and the new meanings it can take on in the present.

I have also placed some of the words people sent me among the paintings. They agreed to tell me what Irish mythology means in their lives today, and wrote about belonging, identity, comfort, strength, memory, immigration, family, sometimes the difficulty of finding a place within a culture, or how certain stories can help us make a place for ourselves there.

A huge thank you to everyone who trusted me with their words. I received so many more messages than I thought I would, honestly, and I was very moved by them. You are wonderful. Your voices have become a really important part of this exhibition ❤️

I also want to give the biggest possible thank you to everyone at the . They have been incredibly kind and welcoming, and so encouraging throughout this project, they gave me a lot of confidence. They helped me so much with the installation too. Everything was easier because of them.

The opening is on Wednesday 2 September at 6.30 pm. I would really love to see some of you there. I hope the room will be full of conversations, people sharing stories, or simply people curious to see what is still living in these myths today.

For now, here is a little preview ✨

Address

Monaghan

Website

https://thechickenleggedshop.etsy.com/, https://www.thechickenleggedworkshop.com/, https://linktr.ee/TheChickenLeggedWor

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