"Honey Bee Haven" by Sinead Carus...Scroll down to see more art...
Ever since Sinead Carus’ father showed her how to color within the lines of her Dukes of Hazzard coloring book when she was around four or five years old, she has been hooked on art. After a career working in a variety of office or assembly jobs, and taking art classes as an adult, she's now thriving in her favorite job ever– full-time artist.
Sinead, who has a fun, bubbly personality and giggles often, seems to thoroughly enjoy talking about her life and livelihood. She’s made her medium a combination of illustration and photography going through many steps to accomplish her distinctive final look. Often her work starts out with a hand drawn design in graphite, black ink over that, scans into a computer to digitally colorize adding a background that might be a photograph.
Her designs are available for sale in a variety of places from Spoonflower to Etsy and can be used on wallpaper, quilts, pillows, clothing and more. She loves encountering another artist or maker at a fair using one of her designs in their own creations. She calls this “finding it in the wild.”
Her favorite subjects are anything nature-based such as florals, plants, and animals.
A lifelong resident of Grayslake, IL and avid nature enthusiast, her artistic inspiration usually begins in the early morning with hikes along local forest preserve trails. And her inspired website name stems from her parental heritage. Her father is a native of Chicago with Norwegian ethnicity, and her mother a native of Ireland. When combining their backgrounds, she cleverly dubbed her website: Irish Viking Designs.
As an artist, her goal is to stir emotion within the viewer, take them on a journey of nostalgia, and leave them with a sense of hope and inspiration.
“I love to create – it makes me so emotional,” Sinead shares. “When people like your artwork because it makes them happy, it’s a wonderful thing.”
She is currently a Guest Artist at the Blue Moon Gallery, 18640 Belvidere Road in Grayslake, IL where her work will be on display until November 17, 2024. The gallery is open weekends 1-4pm.
Follow her here:
Website: Irish Viking Designs
Instagram page: https://www.instagram.com/irishvikingdesigns
"Bohemian Zoo"
"Docs Secret Garden"
"Sanctuary of the Sandhill Crane"
"Walk in an Irish Forest"
"Marisol in a Tropical Garden Greenhouse"
By Sinead Carus
By Sinead Carus
By Sinead Carus