Leaving Donegal, Ireland

Brightscapes: The Way To Beauty

Leaving Donegal, Ireland

acrylic paint on canvas board

8" x 10" (20.3 cm x 25.4 cm)

201801019

© copyright Michael Kraus

To purchase, please visit: https://www.etsy.com/listing/221830295/leaving-donegal-ireland-original-acrylic

This is the last time Frank Duff will see his home. A vanishing glimpse of Donegal, Ireland aboard the ship Eliza slowly heading for America.  While he loves his home, he and his wife, Anna, know there is no future for them there.  For generations, Frank and his family farmed the land.  Their hard labor put food on the table, clothes on their backs, and maybe a little extra to barter when times were difficult.

That all changed when the English exiled the Gaelic leaders from Ireland.  The British made it illegal for Catholics to worship, vote, speak their language, and own property.  With their farm stolen from them, English absentee landlords demanded high rents that they could never afford.  The debt became so large that they were forced off their farm to become migrant farmers traveling through Ulster and Scotland.  Their days consisted of walking barefoot to work and fighting wild dogs for food.  And they'd watch each other die from malnutrition only to be buried in mass graves.

This group of religious/political refugees on the ship Eliza were not welcomed to America.  They practiced the "foreign religion" of Catholicism that "pledged allegiance to the Pope."  Fear was purposely spread that these Irish would bring crime to their cities and they were rapists.  These Irish were coming to take away jobs and their many children would drain the welfare budgets with their diseases and laziness.  So, when the boat docked in New Castle, Delaware, Frank and Anna were now afraid of their new home too.

Frank and Anna Duff were my 5th great-grandparents.  They left the east coast to established a farm in the distant wilderness of Butler, Pennsylvania.  Several generations worked the land and eventually became machinists in factories, firefighters, bridge builders, and soldiers in war and peace.
They only wanted a chance at a better life and I remember their story.

Michael Kraus was born on the industrial shoreline of Muskegon, Michigan. After earning his Fine Arts Degree from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, he attended Grand Valley State University for his graduate degree. From there, he gained varied experiences from the Chicago Architecture Foundation, Art Institute of Chicago, Hauenstein Center For Presidential Studies, Lollypop Farm Humane Society, and the Children's Memorial Foundation. And every place he worked, he had his sketchbook with him and found ways to be actively creative. In 2014, Kraus became a full-time artist by establishing Mike Kraus Art. Since then, he has sold hundreds of paintings that are displayed in nearly every state and dozens of countries. Currently, Kraus lives in Rochester, New York with his beautiful wife and goofy dog.

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Flight Behavior

Flight Behavior, 2014

acrylic painting on canvas

8" x 10"

© copyright Mike Kraus

To purchase, please visit: https://www.etsy.com/listing/197718982/flight-behavior-original-acrylic?

"A small shift between cloud and sun altered the daylight, and the whole landscape intensified, brightening before her eyes.  The forest blazed with its own internal flame.  "Jesus," she said, not calling for help, she and Jesus weren't that close, but putting her voice in the world because nothing else present made sense.  The sun slipped out by another degree, passing its warmth across the land, and the mountain seemed to explode with light.  Brightness of a new intensity moved up the valley in a rippling wave, like the disturbed surface of a lake.  Every bough glowed with an orange blaze.  "Jesus God," she said again.  No words came to her that seemed sane.  Trees turned to fire, a burning bush.  Moses came to mind, and Ezekiel, words from Scripture that occupied a certain space in her brain but no longer carried honest weight, if they ever had.  'Burning coals of fire went up and down among the living creatures.

The flame now appeared to lift from individual treetops in showers of orange sparks, exploding the way a pine log does in a campfire when it's poked.  The sparks spiraled upward in swirls like funnel clouds.  Twisters of brightness against gray sky.  In broad daylight with no comprehension, she watched.  From the tops of the funnels the sparks lifted high and sailed out undirected above the dark forest.  

A forest fire, if that's what it was, would roar.  This consternation swept the mountain in perfect silence.  The air above remained cold and clear.  No smoke, no crackling howl.  She stopped breathing for a second and closed her eyes to listen, but heard nothing.  Only a faint patter like rain on leaves.  Not fire, she thought, but her eyes when opened could only tell her, 'Fire, this place is burning.'  They said, 'Get out of here.'  Up or down, she was unsure.  She eyed the dark uncertainty of the trail and the uncrossable breach of the valley.  It was all the same everywhere, every tree aglow...

...She was on her own here, staring at glowing trees.  Fascination curled itself around her fright.  This was no forest fire.  She was pressed by the quiet elation of escape and knowing better and seeing straight through to the back of herself, in solitude.  She couldn't remember when she's had such room for being.  This was not just another fake thing in her life's cheap chain of events, leading up to this day of sneaking around in someone's thrown-away boots.  Here that ended.  Unearthly beauty had appeared to her, a vision of glory to stop her in the road.  For her alone these orange boughs lifted, these long shadows became a brightness rising.  It looked like the inside of joy, if a person could see that.  A valley of lights, an ethereal wind.  It had to mean something."

-Excerpt by Barbara Kingsolver, "Flight Behavior." 1st ed. New York: Harper Collins, 2012 13-16. Print (http://www.kingsolver.com/books/flight-behavior.html)

This piece would work in a space that is light green, blue, yellow, beige or on wood.

For more information or custom order, please visit:

https://www.etsy.com/shop/MikeKrausArt