NEW *** BOOKS *** BEST SELLERS *** FRANTICHAM *** PRINTS *** MAIL ART *** PHOTO *** ABOUT US *** BLOG *** E-MAIL




"Achill Sketches"
by RENÉ BÖLL



 Hand bound with thread
Hard cover
14 x 16 cm
48 pages
150 numbered copies
March 2025
32 euros




you can order also by email at info@redfoxpress.com




            Why continue to sketch?

            Sketching may seem somewhat old-fashioned at first glance. In the age of AI,
            it is now possible to generate a sketch from a photo, making the work easier.
            However, sketching, as practiced by artists like Caspar David Friedrich, is
            not something that can be handed over to an AI image-generating tool.
            Sketching on location, and absorbing the landscape with pen and paper, as I
            love to do, is a process that cannot be replaced by a machine.

            Caspar David Friedrich often combined several sketches into one picture, such as
            sketches of fir trees in the mountains with a sketch of a ruined church near the sea.
            His work was much more modern than his paintings suggest. He wrote: 'I need solitude
            for a dialogue with nature.'

            Sketching requires close observation, quick, spontaneous and fluid work, with a
            reduction to the essential. It also involves freedom to change, to omit, to limit oneself
            to a few lines.

            For decades, I have enjoyed wandering Achill alone with a sketchbook and pen,
            especially in the region north of Croaghaun, Lake Bunafreva West and the Annagh Valley.
            The latter, on the north coast of Achill, with it's lake and the adjoining small sandy
            beach, can only be reached on foot, over the mountains or by boat from the shore.
            It is thus protected from the crowds of visitors to the wonderful Keem Bay.

            You can spend an entire day there without encountering anyone. Even in the fog, there is
            a special atmosphere that reminds me of the admired Chinese ink painting,
            in which the landscape is often rendered only faintly.

            The Chinese artist Shi Tao said in the 17th century: Antiquity is a tool for knowledge.
            A transformer is characterised by the fact that he perceives it as a tool, but does
            not become one of the ancients’Ķ That is why the noble uses the antiquity to open up
            the present.
            This is my maxim.

































            OTHER BOOKS BY RENÉ BÖLL



            RENÉ BÖLL
            "CILLÍNÍ"

            CHILDREN'S BURIAL GROUNDS IN ACHILL
            Photographs, paintings, watercolours and poems

            44 pages
            14 x 16 cm, hard cover, hand bound
            Limited edition of 150 numbered copies.
            April 2021
            32 Euros / 36 US $ / 30 UK Pds



            "BÖLLS' ACHILL"

            Photographs taken by Heinrich Böll and his family
            in the 50's and 60's
            during their holidays in the West of Ireland

            44 pages
            14 x 16 cm, hard cover, hand bound.
            Limited numbered edition of 150 copies.
            April 2017
            32 Euros / 36 US $ / 30 UK Pds.





            REDFOXPRESS - DUGORT - ACHILL - COUNTY MAYO - INFO@REDFOXPRESS.COM