I am not a painter myself but I really love visual arts, everything from physical paintings to hand created puppets to theatre set designs. My sister Sharon is an artist, so is my wife Anne and our daughter Amélie is a very talented painter now as well. I have done a little graphic design (mostly Cd covers and posters) in the past 15 years and it's great to work with Art pieces for this, some of the great works of Des Dillon, Colm Murphy and my daughter Amélie have made very vibrant album covers for some of the bands I work with.

  Our neighbour in Newcastle, Co.Tipperary is the famous Irish visual artist Des Dillon whom I met in Clonmel many years ago, he plays Irish music on Harmonica and we began collaborating with music and art through some great theatre projects over the years. Shows such as Teac A Bloc, Mag Mell and recently Nóta Stóta are always a pleasure to perform. It's great to work with a professional visual person like Des and combine our music to come up with something very special and unique.

  So many of the people I know in the music world are also talented painters. Harmonica player Des Dillon (From Tipperary), Bodhran player Colm Murphy (From Cork) Singer Songwriter Matthew O'Tuama (From Tipperary) Fiddler Sylvia Nollet (From Brittany) Piper Freddy Ottelli (From Switzerland) to mention only a few, I am very fortunate to call them all very good friends. 

Its an amazing gift and I really appreciate all their fantastic work!