The colour of life on Inish Turbot is the subject of a new book by a Dutch man who has made the once abandoned island his home.

Stefan Frenkel Frank bought a house on Turbot in 1994. He and his wife Hanneke spend six months of every year living on the island, located just a few miles off the Clifden coast.

Over the past 30 years, the pair have been involved in several artistic projects on Turbot, and in his new book Stefan explores his passion for collecting driftwood and other items washed up on the island’s shoreline.

‘The Driftwood Boats of Inish Turbot: Colours of living on a Small Island’ details Stefan’s creativity in building from the items “the sea gives back” – a hobby he developed as a child, growing up in the Netherlands.

“Now, decades later, I walk Turbot Island’s shoreline, still collecting driftwood, ropes, old crate pieces – anything that the sea gives back.

“Sometimes, I wonder if one of those scraps were from one of the boats of my childhood ending up here,” he says.

One of the ‘new islanders’, Stefan was among a number of people who bought holiday homes on Turbot in the mid-1990s. The island was depopulated through the late 1970s and by 1981, all its residents had relocated to the mainland.

The items that wash up on Turbot’s beaches are an endless source of fascination to him and Stefan has found all manner of things, including a few well-travelled rubber duckies which he found on the pebble beach – each with a number printed on it.

“Years ago, I read about them as an experiment – tens of thousands of rubber duckies were thrown overboard in the Caribbean to see where the currents would take them. They were drifting across the ocean for years, scattered across the globe.

“And now, here they were, washed up on my little island,” says Stefan.

When he has all the items gathered, Stefan builds boats and on their sails, he says he paints “memories [and] fragments of island life – quiet tributes to a place that holds so much more than meets the eye”.

His book, he says, shows what it is to survive on an island where there’s nothing else but your imagination to keep you going.

The Driftwood Boats of Inish Turbot: Colours of Living on a Small Island, by Stefan Frenkel Frank, is available to purchase at The Clifden Bookshop.

Pictured: Stefan Frenkel Frank at a signing of his new book, ‘The Driftwood Boats of Inish Turbot’, at The Clifden Bookshop with owner, Nicole Shanahan.