About Raven at the Cliffs of Moher

The Cliffs of Moher, rise dramatically 700feet/200metres from the churning Atlantic in County Clare, on the west coast of Ireland.

It’s – rightly – a massively popular tourist destination on the ‘Wild Atlantic Way’. Despite the many people there, the cliffs are so vast it’s easy to block out them out of your mind and focus on their awesome scale.  We saw fulmars riding the wind below us, stonechats on the stone walls, and even a peregrine falcon. But it was the raven (Corvus corax) that impressed me most. I heard it call  – “rawwwk!” – before I saw it. Ravens are exceptionally intelligent and feature in folklore from around the world. In Irish folklore the raven is the goddess Morrigan.

We visited in October 2019 on a trip to visit my son at university in Galway in October 2019. The weather in this part of the world is always unpredictable, with rain and wind likely to blow in from the sea at any time. Nevertheless, I packed my sketchbook and paintbox just in case there was a possibility of painting. I managed to sketch something reasonable before a squal blew in, and my sketch combined with my husband’s photographs (as well as my memory of the spirit of the place) were my reference material for this painting.