Strands

Initially recognised for his skill as a draughtsman and celebrated for urban architectural scenes, over the past thirty years Donald Teskey has taken the Irish landscape, particularly the western coastline as the subject of his work. Teskey has a longstanding connection with North Mayo, beginning with a residency in the Ballinglen Arts Foundation over twenty-six years ago.  Teskey’s iconic representations of the Western Seaboard are by now firmly fixed in the canon of Irish Art.

The 5km travel restrictions put Teskey’s planned trip to his beloved Mayo on hold and led the artist to rediscover his local River Dodder, returning to a body of work he began in 2018. In August 2021, Teskey returned to Ballycastle in North Mayo. The theatrical compositions he created during this residency there depict Teskey’s unmistakable coastline, its sheets of barren rock and crashing waves with the pull of the Atlantic from sheer cliffs. Yet, in this exhibition, there’s something new in how he conveys the dynamism of this most elemental landscape.

Rosemarie Noone, owner, Claremorris Gallery notes, “The newness of the landscape to the artist upon his return after an extended hiatus is reflected in these paintings, his eye perhaps recalibrated by the isolation of the lockdown.”

Speaking about this body of work, Donald Teskey said, “I brought together a selection of recent paintings which explore themes of landscape, environment, a sense of place, the new and the familiar all immersed in light and atmosphere and a love of paint.”

Over the years, Teskey has participated in group shows in Claremorris Gallery but this will be his first solo exhibition in a commercial gallery in the West of Ireland.