Acclaimed West of Ireland artist Pádraic Reaney has made Irish art and its ‘ancientness’ traditional again, but in a truly radical way, writes Gerald Dawe
If you look carefully enough at Pádraic Reaney’s artwork, you will notice two things. There is the image itself, whatever it may be and whatever its source, be it nature or landscape or literature. But there is also another story underneath, shadowing the main image; its context or cyclorama. Between these two physical presences, Reaney fashions a story, something is being ‘told’, notwithstanding the reality of what we are looking ‘at’. For Reaney is a story-teller and the nature of his art, no matter what form he chooses, generally returns us to a lyrical and often elegiac message. Disturbance can also feature in his settings. Is that dramatic fissure in the landscape drawing the attention of the human figures foregathering around it? Is that the innocent explanation? Or are those presences being released back into our own level of existence like Yeatsian ghosts – or worse? Is that a scene of execution? Hardly not!
The Glucksman Library at the University of Limerick is now one of the most digitally advanced libraries in the world, writes Judith Hill
