: mynfel's celtic hearth : the anteroom :

WELCOME, WEARY WANDERER, TO THE ANTEROOM

Here is my small collection of precious artwork, displayed in my private anteroom, for you to enjoy before exploring the rest of my realm.

Art, like music, crosses the Great Divide of culture, language and time. We Celts took images from everyday life and legend and created an abstract art-form using knot work, spirals and mirror images that, even now, continue to please and inspire.

As Aidan Meehan says in "Spiral Patterns" from his "Celtic Design" book series: "Celtic, Slavic, Greek, Latin, Scandinavian, Armenian, Semitic and Indian languages all share common ancestry, but 'the fallacy that identity of language or of culture necessarily implies identity of race must be carefully guarded against', as James Romilly Allen pointed out a century ago. Or, people who wear jeans and sneakers are not necessarily Americans."

In other words, the Celts moved around Europe so much and came into contact with so many peoples (and were known to integrate aspects of other peoples' art and culture into their own on a regular basis), that the art that is now known as "Celtic" isn't tribal, it is abstract - an ancient mélange of ideas and expression that translates into any language.

Click on the links below to see examples of Celtic Art:

Traditional Celtic Images

Modern Celtic Artists:

You will find credits and links to the generous souls who have provided the Celtic art, music, poetry and reference material free on the Web, as well as a bibliography of the books and publications that make up a large part of my library and have been a rich resource for these pages in the Credits list.