Thought this was a good day to share my oil painting of “Fungie” the dolphin again. He’s a wild dolphin from Dingle, Ireland. I fell in love with this cheerful little guy when I was lucky enough to see him playing in the sea, chasing the boat we were in.
“Stone’s Throw Away” is one of my posts about Ireland. I had a blog about our life there, but I took it down for privacy reasons. I had many photographs of friends and people we met there, and there are now too many visitors to my site for that to be a good idea, especially since it would be hard to track everyone down to ask for permission. But, eventually I will share more of my stories from that time.
These are challenging days. I hope that you are able to put your time and energy into things, people, and places that you love. For all of those that we cannot have back, may our memories of the past bring us peace, and our thoughts of the future give us hope. No season lasts forever. Change is coming.
Watch Natalie paint this art, and all 50 oil paintings in this collection (menu below)
“This very playful and marvelous creature is a dolphin named Fungie. I met him on a boat tour in Dingle, Ireland. He loves showing off for people. He is quite a character, well loved by locals and tourists. Delightful! The Irish are hilarious. As it turns out there’s only ONE dolphin to see on the Celtic Sea dolphin tour. They literally meant “dolphin” tour. Fungie got lost one day and now lives there.
I was living in Ireland in 2016 with the hope of staying for at least a year. Unfortunately I had to cancel my art show because I couldn’t get a “permission to remain” visa. I was sad about this, as it had taken a lot of time and effort to make the art show happen, and my family had our hearts set on staying. Two of my children had received scholarships for the university in Cork.We’d also never lived near the sea before, and it was a healing and life-changing experience. Seeing Fungie was my first time seeing a dolphin in the wild, which was my dream come true! So, when we returned to the Midwestern United States, land-locked, and ocean-less, I didn’t know when or if I’d ever see another dolphin outside of a zoo.
God moves in mysterious ways, and a little over a year later, I was on another dolphin tour, on an ocean that… if we could see clear through to the other shore, we could almost see Ireland. On the Tybee Island dolphin tour, I saw several dolphins, not just one. They usually traveled in pairs and chased the boat. I’ve also seen dolphins while at the beach. I love dolphins so very much. The excitement from seeing them never dims.
Fungie the Dolphin oil painting by Natalie Buske Thomas
List of Oil Paintings in this Collection, linking to their pages here on the site, and also citing physical pages in the hardcover book: