Donald Teskey RHA (b.1956) Coastal Report I Oil on paper, 76.2 x 101.6cm (30 x 40'')SignedOne of the leading Irish artists of his generation, Donald Teskey is so well known as a superbly tactile painter of coastal landscapes, concentrated on the sea, it can be hard to credit that he devoted a considerable part of his early career to drawing. More, his drawings were of the city. When he turned to painting, urban subject matter continued to dominate. But his work, whether drawing or painting, was always dynamic, always in thrall to the rush and flow of light, wind and air through the topography of street and alley, railway and canal, and through anomalous open spaces. In retrospect, we can see his rendering of areas of, say, Milltown or Dublin 8, as, literally, urban landscapes, with for example the industrial expanses of the Guinness complex around James’s St interpreted as manmade cliffs and canyons.Of Palatine descent, Teskey was born in Rathkeale, and studied at Limerick School of Art and Design. Limerick city featured in his early, exceptionally accomplished drawings, but he had long been based in Dublin by the time he was seriously drawn back to the west. In the mid-1990s, he was invited to visit the Ballinglen Arts Foundation in Ballycastle on the north Mayo coast. A monumental, uncompromising terrain was at his doorstep. As he observed, his paintings were built on the armature of urban structure, and for a time he did paint the structural fabric of Ballycastle and its surroundings. Besides returning often to Mayo, he also stayed at Ballinskelligs in Co Kerry and on the West Cork coast. Gradually he moved beyond the coastal infrastructure of coastal villages, piers and harbours to address the sea itself. As he put it: “It was a question of finding an organic structure that allows the paint to speak.”He found that structure in the elemental clash of sea and shore. The moment when a wave hits rock crystallises a dynamic balance of matter and energy. This oil is an exceptionally pure expression of the artist’s fascination with that moment of impact, when you are standing down on the rocks and the vast energy of the ocean breaches the steadfast boundary of the shore. He has said that he aims to capture exactly that moment in paint.Aiden Dunne, February 2020