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Driving west on R340, the wonderfully scenic twisty road along the Connemara coast from Galway towards Carna, we passed over a narrow inlet and up ahead saw a road off to the left winding down to a pier.

I never saw a pier I didn't like. So we turned off the road and doubled back past the ubiquitous, and very effectve, sign warning us not to drive into the water, down to the long

concrete pier sloping gently into Galway Bay. There I found two amazing piles of shells, one mostly clamshells and the other mostly oyster shells. They were so closely packed that it looked like an art installation, as if carefully assembled by hand. It's taken me four years to do a painting of that amazing gathering of subtly colored shells.

I later learned we were in the townland of Cill Chiaráin, which means, "Ciarán's Church." The sixth-century Saint Ciarán spent many years here.