Thursday, 25 of April of 2024
Rod Coyne: life as an artist
“Atlantic Blue” 20×30cm, oil on canvas, 2010.
“Atlantic Crash” 15x10cm, oil on canvas, 2010.
“Bolus Sunset” 15x10cm, oil on canvas, 2010.
“Clear Spirit” triptych 3x 40x50cm, oil on canvas, 2010.
“Coomacarrea, Kerry” 40x50cm, oil on canvas, 2010.
“Ocean & Sea”
I just dropped some new works to a gallery in Dublin this afternoon. “Ocean & Sea” will be opening at 6pm Urban Retreat Gallery, Hanover Quay, Dublin 2 on Thursday 22nd July 2010. I am in some esteemed company for this group show of wild Irish seascapes, apart from myself there’s Linda Graham, Neal Greig, Barbara Hirst, Brenda Malley, Kate McLaughlin, Cora Murphy and Louise Newman. The exhibition wasn’t hanging yet but I saw some great paintings standing on the floor. I think the show will be well worth seeing and I will give you an update after the opening night.
“Dawn, Carlingford Lough” copper leaf and oil on canvas, 18x24cm, € 475.00
“Trawler: Ballinskelligs Bay” oil on canvas, 23x30cm, € 575.00 .
“Worlds End: Valentia” oil on canvas, 50x40cm, € 1475.00
“Weather Imminent” oil on canvas, 70x100cm, € 3500.00
This painting is called “Native: Big Chief O’Brien” and is one of five in the “Native” series. I had been carrying the images around with me for close to 20 years and have finally got around to using them. The delay is probably not such a bad thing, as I would have painted them very differently back then.
“Native: Big Chief O’Brien” 70x100cm, oil on canvas.
I am really happy with how he turned out. As usual the painting became something quite different to what I had planned. I started out wanting to paint a big head to hang in my gallery window. My further brief was to look for a landscape in the face, a rugged, weathered and gnarled image to be contrasted with a flat background colour ala Andy Warhol. But straight away I was so taken with his feather and plaits that I had to include them, thus reducing the overall size of the head on the canvas. I feel I did get the landscape in the features, but as far as the background is concerned I really went off the rails. I really like it, I think it complements and echoes the painting style around the features and has radiant heat in the colour while up close has a dreamy palette knife impasto.
The native theme arises from the term Native American, which got me thinking about the term, and how do we perceive it; when and where is someone native, and when are they not. So I decided to play on those questions by confusing the titles, where the name is a mixture of a “typical Indian” name combined with some typically Irish family name.