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Donald Teskey COASTLINE NARRATIVE III
Lot 36
Price Realised: €30,000
Estimate: €30,000 - €50,000
Donald Teskey RHA, b.1956
COASTLINE NARRATIVE III
Oil on canvas, 71" x 90 1/2" (180 x 230cm), signed; signed, inscribed and dated 2006 verso

Provenance: Rubicon Gallery, Dublin (label verso)

One of the more extraordinary achievements of Donal... Read more
Lot 36 - COASTLINE NARRATIVE III by Donald Teskey Lot 36 Donald Teskey COASTLINE NARRATIVE III
Estimate: €30,000 - €50,000
Donald Teskey RHA, b.1956
COASTLINE NARRATIVE III
Oil on canvas, 71" x 90 1/2" (180 x 230cm), signed; signed, inscribed and dated 2006 verso

Provenance: Rubicon Gallery, Dublin (label verso)

One of the more extraordinary achievements of Donald Teskey's paintings is that, for all the uproar, the booming din that is part and parcel of their topics, their effect on us is one of calm. If we were to think of them as freeze-frames of a film, it would be one without sound, or with the sound turned down.

I believe Donald Teskey's finest works so far are his large-scale acts of attention to the ferocious clash of land and ocean, a series of masterpieces - yes, masterpieces - he extends in Coastline Narratives. Exact and evocative, these paintings enact every detail of the drama of the waves' assault on the shore's abrupt edge and, by pitting such elemental powers against each other, they conjure that conundrum of physics - the unstoppable force and the immovable object. And yet they display no over-awed, dispassionate detachment.

Donald Teskey has spoken about his art as 'chasing the light', he follows it into the nooks and crannies of the rocks, tracing the fault lines and defects which reveal their ultimate character. The precise whereabouts of Teskey's tidal and coastline narratives are declared only through the paintings' titles or through the artist's specific report. We couldn't ever say we recognize or could pinpoint their map position. That's not what's important.

Teskey's signature pieces are distinguished, first, by the expert confidence of their composition. Many of these Coastline Narratives are etched in a way that we might see a score and hear its notes. They are underpinned by grids and graphs the paints will fill, layer on layer, as they're scratched and scraped into being. Others are inscribed with lines that direct our eyes and instruct us like ogam (modern Irish, ogham prounounced om), that ancient system of markings cut into stone, which served as memorials and territorial boundaries. Land's ends, you might say. Secondly, they are remarkable for the economy and efficiency of their coloration, the artist's variation on themes within a narrow spectrum, the delicate balance of whites, greys and light blues offset only by the occasional stain of minerals deep in the monoliths or by earth tones of a distant backdrop. The colour range contributes to his works' sense of lull or interlude. His is an assuaging art. His paintings have what Ted Hughes called 'the authentic fingerprint of experience'. They begin in a place, in the world, in fact - and end in glorious art. And yet for all the quietness I've emphasised, the silent opera of what Donald Teskey has already accomplished, there is in his work a hushed insistence.

Ref: Extracts taken from the publication 'Coastline Narratives', 17 Oct 2006, by Peter Fallon, written in 2006. Peter Fallon is editor and publisher of The Gallery Press.
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