There Is No Other Stream
Is it acceptable to paint what is eternal in the human condition and experience of the natural world, or is a work of Art only valid, as some say, if it reflects its own time, its 'Zeitgeist'? Can we no longer paint history, or myth, or a timeless scene?
With the almost complete hegemony of postmodernism or conceptual art in the art and design...
Can a myth be true? Yeats, Lewis and Tolkien
Recently in my paintings I have been exploring the romantic and mythic poetry of W B Yeats (see the paintings Cap and Bells; Silver Trout; Penny, Brown Penny; Heaven's Embroidered Cloths, and The Departure of Oisín, shown here). The romantic is, of course, familiar territory; the mythic less so, and full of siren voices. My exploration was partly...
Oscar Wilde and the Uselessness of Art
There is a popular polychrome sculpture of Oscar Wilde lounging on a rock at one corner of the grand eighteenth-century Merrion Square in Dublin. To the west side, across the wide street, is the splendid art collection that fills the National Gallery of Ireland. The space between statue and gallery might be thought to vibrate with Wilde’s comment...
Big cows and little cows: Father Ted on perspective
In the comedy series Father Ted, the curate, Fr Dougal, is (characteristically) finding it difficult to understand why far away cows look smaller than they really are. Ted’s explanation about big cows (near) and little cows (far away) never quite gets home.
But there was, historically, far more to perspective and its spiritual significance than...
FARRAGO blog
