Brian Boylan at work in his Redondo Beach studio (Photo by Paige Brettingen)

The walls in his Redondo Beach apartment and artist-studio pop with every shade of emerald green and cobalt blue, awash with dazzling chalk drawings of mythical Irish folklore. A fiery-haired Irish maiden strokes a unicorn's silvery mane in the kitchen. In the living room, a five-headed wave encroaches on a salmon's fated journey. For every picture, there's an Irish tale begging to be told over a cup of tea or — in the case of us on this sweltering afternoon — iced tea.

Boylan has always been an artist. "You're not inspired to be an artist, you just are one," he said, pausing to dust off the remaining blue and green chalk caked on his fingertips. But producing art outside of his profession was something he had never really considered before.

By trade, he's an animator.

After leaving his small seaside town of Skerries, Ireland, located 17 miles outside Dublin, Boylan lent his talent to a variety of animated films over the past 22 years: "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," "The Lion King," "Prince of Egypt," "The Land Before Time," "Spirit" and various Bugs Bunny shorts, just to name a few.

It was during a visit back to Ireland that he first entertained art as more than a profession.

Drawing inspiration from a Celtic design he saw on a matchbox at a pub, Boylan was determined to uncover its origin. After doing enough asking, he discovered it was from the Book of Kells — a collection of the four Gospels in Latin, known for its elaborate decoration and masterful calligraphy. Monks are said to have written the book in 800 A.D. after taking refuge from a Viking raid at a monastery in Kells, County Meath. The book is now on display at Trinity College in Dublin.

What struck Boylan about the Book of Kells was the Celtic knot-work pattern that formed the book's letters. At first glance, the decoration may appear rather simple. But as Boylan pointed out, it's incredibly intricate.

Besides being drawn to the beauty of the Celtic knot design, Boyle was inspired to start integrating his heritage into his work.

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"It's very much so my duty," he said about reflecting the old Irish stories in his work. "Irish people who come to my shows in L.A. may have forgotten the stories, but they all recognize them in the paintings. I think it's important to keep that tradition going."

A story that's become a profound theme in many of his pieces is "The Children of Lir" (pronounced "Leer"). As the tale goes, an evil stepmother — "Because there's always an evil stepmother, even before Disney," said Boylan — put a spell on her stepchildren, jealous of the attention the father doted upon them. The children were transformed into swans. The father spent the rest of his life following the swans, which sang to him every night. The spell broke after 900 years with the children dying of old age.

Boylan's pictures depict various phases of the tale. There's the moment where the children are emerging as swans out of an emerald green sea engulfed in flames. Another piece shows them taking their first flight away from Ireland, the four flying in tandem as though they are one. This version is also painted on a surfboard displayed above a rack of clothes in Boylan's closet. It was one of the pieces featured at the Santa Monica Film Festival.

Boylan told me Roy Disney, Walt Disney's nephew, loved the story so much that he commissioned a painting of it for their Irish castle.

But Roy's fondness for the story wasn't enough to bring it to the silver screen.

"He said, 'Well, Disney doesn't change the story, and we can't have people dying at the end,' which I disagree with because Disney does change the story all the time," he said with a laugh and a shake of his head.

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Another one of Boylan's favorites is the "An Bradan Feast," or The Salmon of Knowledge, a mural that's as tall as Boylan himself and features an array of blue hues displayed in the living room. Instead of focusing on the protagonist, who goes on to become a famed hero of Irish myth, Boylan chose to focus on a character that helped the hero gain all the knowledge in the world: the salmon. The piece reflects the salmon's resistance of succumbing to the waves, which Boylan personifies as a multi-eyed creature.

"That took a long time to get the height and the feeling...the wave's recognition of the salmon's struggle but that mother nature also has to do her piece," he said.

Besides the Celtic knots and spirals in his paintings, Boylan's spectacular use of color is perhaps his biggest trademark, though it's one he says he can't really take credit for.

"Every picture chooses its color, that's how I see it," he said. "The picture will change, the color will change, everything will change about the picture. I just have an instant idea, but I don't plan anything."

Boylan's chalk murals are sold for about $1,500 to $3,000 and can be found at Irish festivals in the L.A. area. His work will be on display at The 38th Annual Big Irish Fair in Irvine, Calif., from June 15-16.

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Reach Managing Editor Paige Brettingen here. Follow her here.