Nature as Muse: The Authentic World of Eimear Maguire

Eimear Maguire

Dollybirds Art

Belfast-based artist Eimear Maguire shares how daily walks, natural rhythms, and quiet rituals shape her hand-painted work – and why nature, for her, is both subject and sanctuary.

In her home studio looking out onto her garden in Belfast, surrounded by the foothills of Cavehill, Eimear Maguire begins her mornings with a ritual. She walks up the mountain, makes coffee or herbal tea, burns sage and lights a candle, and puts on her apron. “That’s like putting on my uniform” she explains. This space, with its natural light and quiet, is the creative centre of Dollybirds Art – her practice built around hand-painted work inspired by nature.

Nature, Maguire says, has always been a constant. “Although my work has changed throughout my lifetime, nature has always been really a constant source of inspiration.” Her connection to the land comes not only from her surroundings, but from her upbringing. Her father, also an artist, played a central role in shaping her creative and environmental sensibilities. “My earliest memories are sitting on the sofa with him and drawing,” she recalls. He would take the family out every weekend, driving out over Lough Neagh and walking through the countryside. “He used to walk us over Belfast’s hills and that’s where we would go with him now.” Even in his eighties, she says, he still loves to get out to places like Divis, a connection that continues to inspire her own routine. Those shared experiences instilled not only a love of nature but a way of seeing and moving through it that continues to influence her daily practice.

During a recent residency in West Cork arranged through The Duncairn, Maguire stayed at the top of Mount Kid, a remote and wild setting with 360-degree views. The drive up was daunting, but the location was perfect. “It was everything that I really needed,” she says. Waking up to the dawn chorus and the sound of cows became part of her experience of place. She absorbed rather than created, but when she returned home, she was full of energy. “You just have to get it out onto the canvas,” she says.

That week of immersion shifted her practice. She found herself returning to landscapes for the first time in years, painting in oils instead of gouache. The vibrancy of Ballydehob and especially Levi’s Corner House found its way into her palette. “Levi’s Corner House, painted bright pink, in the town really is the center of creativity of that area,” she recalls. “They have an area out the back where they were making masks. They do a lot of parades, carnivals and festivals.” Levi’s stood out as a space that blurred boundaries, ”almost like a community center, pub, music venue.” It was the heart of the town’s creative life, and, as Eimear explains, “Everyone we met there talked about it… it was all just so positive.” That brightness and energy led her to paint on pink ground for the first time: “It was a nice way for me to just incorporate it into my work. I’d never done anything like that before.”

While she typically uses gouache – these new landscapes demanded oil. “With gouache I focus inwards. Whereas with oils I can work outwards.”

On walks with fellow artist Sonia Caldwell she collected seaweed, grasses, and shells. She described how certain objects seemed to call out to be painted. These gatherings, always a part of her process, became the foundation for something new. For the first time, she is creating a collaborative nature map. “There were no road signs to our accommodation on Mount Kid, and all the roads looked the same. The broken gorse, the blue house and the fern walls became our markers – quiet signs from nature that we hadn’t lost our way”.

These journeys have inspired the nature map. “I’m going to work with Corrina Askin, an illustrator who was with me on the trip, on this,” she says. “The iridescent shell, that’s going to be the moon. A piece of crockery, that’s going to be the North Star.”

Her studio reflects this collected, layered life. One desk is for painting, the other for computer work. “I always think of this as my nest,” she says. Each morning includes journaling, writing out tasks, and checking her chalkboard of longer-term goals. Structure and ritual help her navigate the practical aspects of running a creative business.

A project for Bushmills Distillery had her painting the very barley used to make their whiskey – stalks from County Cork laid beside her as reference. Her observation of nature is always close and intimate. “I go to the beach, I take in everything… but I’ll focus in and I’ll find one thing where I think, right, that’s the thing I want to paint.”

She sees a relationship between this kind of focused seeing and her life at home, her children, and her garden studio. Working from home, rather than in a city-centre space, has grounded her.

Her walks are a constant source of calm and gentle inspiration—half-hour morning routes, long shoreline strolls in Donegal, and weekend hikes up Divis. But the Seven Summits challenge in the Mournes stood apart. “It was really, equally, a mental and physical challenge,” she says. Moving from single peaks to multiple climbs in a day, she was pushed far beyond her usual rhythm. Yet the views—”breathtaking, spectacular”—were motivation enough to go from peak to peak. It’s a contrast to her usual meandering paths, but one that, like all her walks, ultimately feeds into her creative life.

This desire to share a sense of ownership, wonder, and connection is central to Maguire’s practice. She hopes her work, particularly shared through social media, inspires others to go for a walk in the woods or spend time by the sea. “Spark enough curiosity so, people then might… generate interest in the natural world and experience it for themselves.”

She’s currently working on a children’s book based on bird migration. “It’s about a bird… but I also think it really relates to human life.” She hopes readers will see themselves in the journey between two homes—between belonging and moving. One of the characters, an egret, has already appeared on her Instagram.
The conversation turns to swifts, and Eimear lights up. “They’re my favourite birds,” she says. “I have about five here, they fly over my house.” For her, their arrival marks a shift not just in season, but in mood and presence. “The noise they make… it just actually makes me relax” That screaming sound—often overlooked by others—acts as a signal of renewal and comfort, anchoring Eimear’s sense of time and place through the natural rhythms she finds so grounding in her work.

Through Dollybirds Art, Eimear Maguire invites us to slow down, look closely, walk further, and find our own rhythm in the natural world.