Donald Teskey - Where the Wild Things Are
This article appeared in the Sunday Times on the 26th August 2012
Three miles west of Macroom, on the road to Inchigeelagh, you come upon an eerily arresting sight: a large body of water with numerous small islands and what appear to be the remnants of trees protruding from its depths. This is the Gearagh, and what you are seeing is the remains of the only post-glacial alluvial forest in western Europe.
The area encompasses the lost village of Annahala, and was inhabited until the flooding of the Lee Valley for the Inniscarra dam in the 1950s. Redundant roadways and entrances to houses remain — poignant reminders of a vanished community. It’s a botanist’s dream; a treasure chest of flora and fauna. During dry spells, you can find mugwort that will flavour your fish dishes and is said to promote shamanic journeying. But you don’t really need mugwort to get in touch with your spiritual side in this spooky locale. Just take a walk, or better still a kayak, and immerse yourself in the wooded labyrinth.
Which is precisely what Donald Teskey did in the spring of 2008 when he spent six weeks as a guest of the Gearagh artist residency programme. This immersion has resulted in a suite of paintings that capture the essence of the place. He has now brought these paintings back to the locale that inspired them, with an exhibition, Nature Reserve: Paintings from the Gearagh — curated by John P Quinlan of the Vangard Gallery — at the Town Hall Gallery in Macroom.
The paintings radiate an “air of intense existence”, to use Elizabeth Bowen’s phrase. The abiding feeling, despite the occasional scudding cloud, is one of stillness, of life arrested. This is in marked contrast to the violence and movement in his Atlantic paintings. He works with equal fluency in oil on canvas or acrylic on paper, bringing a quiet inevitability to his compositions. They feel right. There are glorious panoramas of trees and water as in The Lee Valley and Nature Reserve pieces. These give us a sense of the magic of the Gearagh as a whole.
In other pieces, such as The Gearagh, Wilderness I, he moves in close and we see evidence of spring in the emerging flowers. There are frequent signs of human intrusion: an abandoned car of venerable vintage, bright glimpses of houses through the trees, a white monumental gable, and a high road. And everywhere the palpable atmosphere of the place: the play of light on the water, the dark intrusions of the stumps and clumps of vegetation. “Their beauty is that of shade, of shadow, of ghost,” as Frank McGuinness has written of Teskey’s art. This is a stunningly impressive exhibition — you walk around it and breathe in the Gearagh.
Teskey is arguably the most successful visual artist in Ireland at present, certainly the most successful painter, and many would add the most talented. A modest and thoughtful man he is reluctant to discuss his prices and commercial success. We know he achieved the highest prices at the past two Royal Hibernian Academy annual exhibitions, with one piece selling for €50,000 (£40,000) in 2011. He has done well abroad, shattering the myth that Irish art sells only in Ireland. Many Dublin galleries are now looking outside Ireland for markets, but Teskey has exhibited and sold in the UK and America for many years. He had his first solo show in the Clink Wharf Gallery in London in 1996 and has since had regular shows in the Art First Gallery just off Oxford Street.
Teskey is reluctant to refer to himself as an artist, preferring the more prosaic term “painter”. He likes to quote Brian Burke: “I’m only an artist some days.” This acknowledges that the magic occurs only from time to time. It certainly happened for Teskey this time. With these works from the Gearagh, it’s safe to use the more exalted title.
It’s where he always wanted to be. At the age of 12, he informed his father, a Limerick builder, that he wanted to be an artist. His parents were prescient enough to encourage this interest, buying him oils and brushes and letting him loose in the local landscape. His ancestors were Palatines — displaced German Lutherans who settled in the Castlematrix area in the early 18th century. Teskey developed his love of landscape in the environs of Bruff and Lough Gur. His father took him on fishing trips, providing ample painting opportunities for the budding artist and initiating a love affair with water. An encounter with Velasquez via the Encyclopedia Britannica added fuel to this early spark.
The child was father to the man. After going to boarding school in Wesley College, Dublin he moved to the Limerick College of Art. There he was exposed to the influence of Jack Donovan, who set many an artistic career in motion. Following graduation, he was offered a show in the Lincoln Gallery in Dublin in 1980, thanks to a recommendation from one of its artists. In this way, he escaped the traipsing around galleries that is the lot of most young artists.
These early works, pencil drawings of Dublin with a surreal twist, sold well. Significantly for Teskey, two fellow artists — Mick Cullen and Patrick Hall — bought pieces. This confirmed to him that he’d chosen the right road. A high-profile group show in America followed and Teskey was on his way. The Gearagh wasn’t his first lonely rural retreat. Not for him the costive studio, producing variations on a successful theme. He prefers to go forth and explore, to swagger the nut-strewn road. In 2006, he was invited by the prestigious Albers Foundation to be its artist-in-residence in Bethany, Connecticut — a singular acknowledgement of his status.
Surviving and thriving in remote locations seems to be a recurring feature for Teskey. The west coast of Ireland has been a rich source of inspiration. He has returned many times to Ballinglen in north Mayo to renew his relationship with the turbulent Atlantic. He has spent time in Ballinskelligs in Kerry, and on Cape Clear. Early in his career, he moved from moody enclosed urban scenes to the wildness of west-coast waves; from explorations of wooded rural Connecticut to gritty representations of the back lots of Boston. In 2003, he took on snow and rural Vermont. Each new locale is a problem to be solved, a test.
Despite his regular periods of isolation, it would be a mistake to think of Teskey as some kind of artistic anchorite, returning periodically from rural retreats to astound his urban admirers with new visions. He plays an active part in the Irish art scene, being a member of the RHA and involved with its programme board. He has been a member of Aosdana since 2006, and was chairman of the board of Graphic Studio Dublin for two years, which involved steering a storm-tossed vessel into safer waters and was far from being a sinecure. Asked why he would want to commit time to such a fraught endeavour, Teskey says that he felt duty-bound to give back to a business that had been so good to him.
The artistic courage he shows in constantly changing his milieu also manifests itself in a willingness to explore other creative avenues. He regularly operates in the collaborative world of printmaking — with both Graphic Studio Dublin and the Stoney Road Press. Many artists avoid intrusions on their artistic vision, but Teskey cheerfully embraces the dialogue with the master printer that is the essence of printmaking. He has worked with the poet Sue Hubbard, illustrating a book of her poems, and has taken the daunting challenge of illustrating a limited-edition script for Conversations in the Mountains, a radio play by John Banville, who is not shy about aesthetic judgments.
In some ways, Teskey is a disgrace to his profession. We like a touch of Van Gogh or even Caravaggio in our artists. The trajectory of his career has been smooth and uneventful. There have been no false moves, no early struggle, no creative blocks, no bitter rivalries. There’s no bohemian dress code, no drinking and whoring (although he likes a pint of Guinness), no o’erweening attitude. His appearance has a touch of Anthony Hopkins, especially around the eyes, but that’s as devilish as it gets.
His favourite tool is the plasterer’s trowel — you suspect some atavistic link with his Palatine forebears. He uses it to transfer swathes of paint onto his canvases, and as a drawing tool. This prosaic implement is an apt metaphor for the hard work that has informed his career. Teskey has used his talent well. He has a magical ability to transmute encounters with transitory nature into timeless art.
Nature Reserve: Paintings from the Gearagh is at the Town Hall Gallery, Macroom, until September 8, 2012.
John P. O’Sullivan
August 2012
