Hello and welcome to Ireland Creates and this week we are celebrating. I’m delighted to say we have reached 1,000 listens and I’d like to thank each and every one of you for tuning in each week.

While the majority of you are listening from Ireland it’s been great to see just how international our audience has become. According to the analytics behind the podcast, a significant number of you are from North America, while some of you are in New Zealand, Lithuania, as far away as Japan, Mexico and Brazil and even Thailand.

One of the things I love about creating this podcast is the community that’s building up around it, from those of you who message me to say you listen each week to the fabulous guests I get to speak with for each episode. I thoroughly enjoy hearing from you so please do feel free to message me through my website or on instagram.

In podcasting terms reaching 1,000 listens is a great milestone to reach, and so I would like to encourage you to become a patron of Ireland Creates by backing the podcast on Patreon.com/irelandcreates. I want to keep the podcast as accessible to all so I will keep publishing on your favourite platform however making the podcast comes with costs and so that’s why I’ve joined Patreon and will be adding some exclusive content there over the coming weeks and months. You can back the podcast for as much as you would like each month - for as little as a price of coffee or more it’s up to you, but I hope you will help the podcast grow so that we can continue to spread the word about Ireland’s amazing storytellers across all artforms.

And now onto today’s guest - A man who has become known for painting in public whether it’s rooftops, city streets or even botanical gardens Gerard Byrne likes to bring his paint brush and easel and paint on location. After starting off his career as a tradesman a near death experience sparked his decision to become an artist full time. It was fantastic to catch up with Gerard and I hope you enjoy his story.

You can check out Gerard's work on https://gerardbyrneartist.com/

Our theme tune is by www.CreateSchool.ie