About Us

Welcome to Spiral Beyond The Pale! 

I grew up in the west of Ireland, where the fields hold ringforts nobody ploughs over and the stories are older than the roads. Somewhere along the way I started to wonder what still lives out there, and then I started drawing it.

Spiral Beyond the Pale is my field guide to a wilder Ireland, a Western Ireland reimagined as a place haunted by forgotten folklore and elusive creatures born from the most natural shape there is: the spiral. Rooted in a deep love for the landscape I grew up in, it is a fantasy world made to lure urban dwellers out of their cities and into the wild in search of these mythical beings.

At the heart of it is an illustrated scroll, chronicling four spiral beings that roam this fabled west, joined by a poster campaign and a mixed-media animation inspired by a photographic record of every spiral I found in the wild. Every piece in this shop begins as a hand-inked drawing.

I studied illustration at the National College of Art & Design in Dublin, graduating in 2025. My work has appeared in the Irish Independent's New Irish Writing series, and I'm currently the lead illustrator on a forthcoming children's book with Tribes Press in Galway. When I'm not at the drawing board, I'm usually out west, collecting spirals.

The art prints here are signed and numbered limited editions. Alongside them you'll find the creatures roaming loose on totes and other wearables, for taking the fabled west out into the world.

This is a call to unravel, to seek, and to spiral outward ,towards something wilder, beyond the pale.

Hannah McCormack