Paul Spellman has built up a body of work, which captures locations from Dalkey and Skerries, to Cap Ferrat in France and Ostia in Italy. He is a nephew of Father Paul Spellman, the former parish priest in Ringsend.

The upcoming exhibition in Dalkey Castle is so called because of the limited palette employed to render the interplay of sea, sky and land, mainly coastal scenes.

Paul has spent two years on these landscapes. He is a self-taught painter, however, history of art was the subject of his academic study, with landscapes as a speciality at masters level. The paintings are priced from €180 to €850.

Paul describes the process of each painting, done in three sittings, with brush outline and ochre wash, then the blocking in of the landscape objects, and finally the detail.

It sounds instant and fast, and the impression is immediate, and the locales unmistakeable because of their familiarity to us. However, these scenes have been with him for a long time, as he grew up in Dalkey, and his wife Margarita comes from Skerries.

“The South Dublin Coast is quite rugged and very hilly: the land tends to sweep down to the sea, from places like Killiney Hill, Bray Head and the Vico Road. Whereas the North County Dublin coast is flatter, and not as overly dramatic,” Paul says.

When you look at the paintings of the islands: Dalkey, Lambay and Ireland’s Eye, and the dramatic aerial views, from Killiney Hill or overlooking Wicklow, you can experience a sharp intake of breath with the recognition. Trying not to do the obvious, the perspectives used can be either subtle or striking: scenes taken from a low vantage point, from the beach itself, or a bird’s eye view from the cliffs.

The paintings, being formalist in style, are not intended to be atmospheric and reflect no particular time of day. Yet you can’t help but want to take a dip in the Mediterranean, or you are in Sligo, imagining yourself in the King’s Gully at the foot of Ben Bulben, the most auspicious place in Celtic mysticism, as that is where Diarmuid and Grainne met their demise.

Yet this art is not photorealism. The artist alters the tonality to suit his purposes, sticking to natural muted colours. The colour mix is very close to what you see.

Influences are many and absorbed , such as the the French plein air artists of the Barbizon school, and the post-impressionist Cezanne. His work is concerned with structure and form of the land, and not that obsessed with capturing light as were the Impressionists.

Blues reflect the climate, greens and browns are the coast and rocks. Seaweed is a series of strewn lines leading to the edge of the sea where waves are parallel. There is a swash of white in the water where a power boat has just been. White paint is also barely used on a mountainside to suggest a distant village.

Flat horizons remind me of travelling on the DART, and landscapes with no focal point in green and blue remind me of colour dreams. A rare red object is a towel discarded before a swim.