The artist:

Elsa de Brun was born in Sweden in 1896. She always held the fire of an artist in her, writing her first poem at age 8 and studying the art she saw while growing up in Sweden and vacationing in Denmark. She moved to New York City with her family when she was 19, where she continued art appreciation, this time exploring American artists such as Eugene O’Neill and Georgia O’Keefe.  After she lived quite a full life, including marriage, children, and a divorce, Elsa found her long-time companion, Patric Farrell, who encouraged Elsa’s artistic talent. She began seriously creating art at the age of 50, working under the name Nuala (a Gaelic name meaning “beauty of the white shoulders”). Patric and Elsa were members of the James Joyce Society, and a result of her appreciation for Joyce was her project “A Valentines for James Joyce.”

The Finnegans Wake Reading Group members:

The reading group is based in Austin, Texas, and meets twice monthly to study Finnegans Wake. A subset of this group has taken on the project of bringing Elsa de Brun’s tribute to James Joyce back into the world. The group is a diverse set of people from a variety of backgrounds and spanning differing ages. They all have in common an affinity for Wakean wordplay and the stunning beauty of de Brun’s art.

My Nuala cropped

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