D. Coleman, Artist

05/08/2026

02/06/2026

Thanks everyone for your support over the last couple of months. It has been a good experience. I have so much more I’m going to create. Here’s a look back.

Have a great weekend!

02/05/2026

Sketch and finished painting of Elk River Falls. 🎨💙

02/05/2026

Don’t have a name for it yet, so for now its name is,

“Untitled”
14x18 Watercolor and White India Ink on 300lb Fabriano
(No gouache this time 😊)

02/05/2026

Alright. Here’s my most recent. I’m gonna sit with it for a bit, cos frankly the weather seems to be effecting me adversely rn. 😞

I’ll get back to maybe this evening.

02/05/2026

Beginning a new one. Laying in washes. As I mentioned earlier, I am aiming for much looser brushwork and more abstract concepts. Inspired by Elk River Falls, here in western NC.

02/02/2026

This has been fun and intense and making me realize I’m way out of my depth! I don’t have as steady a hand as I thought. I am in fact going to work really hard on long brush strokes. I’ve always loved writing and calligraphy and I plan on pursuing this much more. I hit something pretty deep again in doing this. I just loved every moment of it. Honestly the most challenging part was wrapping my mind around how to do more intricate ornamental borders and knotwork. I have a few more things to actually finish but I wanted to get this out. There is a lot of whimsy and playfulness in this. Hope you have enjoyed sharing this process with me.

02/01/2026

Update….

I’m thinking about more ornaments across the top. Possibly even some Gaelic that remains mostly ghosted in the background sky…

02/01/2026

Still working out what I’m going to do with the sky. Skies were never depicted in Celtic art so I’ve gotta make something up. Japanese artwork depicts skies often, especially clouds. I may borrow some ideas from that but I’m just not sure. What I’m imagining, because of the theme of this painting, are golden, glowing clouds on the left side, depicting Brendan’s voyage leaving Eryn’s western shore.

The hope of Brendan and the fourteen (or sixteen depending on what manuscript is read) brothers was to sail westward to find the Blessed Island. Fairly recent discoveries—within the last 50 years or so—have found some evidence that Brendan did indeed make the trip across the Atlantic across the North Sea by way Iceland, Greenland, and landing in Newfoundland. This would predate his arrival ahead of the Vikings by 500 years and Columbus by a millennium.

One sailor in particular who built a Curragh, the same type of boat used by Irish fishermen for centuries, sailed across the Atlantic and defied the odds, proving at least that transatlantic travel would have been possible by Brendan and his intrepid monks. Other navigators familiar with Brendan’s story have noted the descriptions in the legend being remarkably similar to natural occurrences of weather and volcanic activity and places along the route.

Brendan and his cohorts also returned to the green Isle and continued to establish monasteries all across Great Britain.