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Donald Teskey

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Castlemorris Woods

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Oliver Sears Gallery, Dublin

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8 September  - 8 November 

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92nd Street Y, New York 

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17 September – 19 November  

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Oliver Sears Gallery is pleased to present 

Castlemorris Woods by Limerick born painter, Donald Teskey at 92NY.

 

The exhibition which celebrates the artist's 70th year, comprises nine oil works on canvas, eleven acrylic on paper and six charcoals.

 

In imbricated venues, eight works will be shown in the gallery in Dublin, while the eighteen will be exhibited at 92NY, the storied 150 year old cultural centre in Manhattan.

 

A fully illustrated catalogue accompanies the exhibition with an essay by the poet, Paula Meehan.

 

In 2022, Donald Teskey was the recipient of the Tony O’Malley Residency award, first set up in 2010 by Jane O'Malley, the wife of Tony O'Malley, the most important Irish abstract painter of his generation. The Residency, administered by the Royal Hibernian Academy School, is awarded on an annual basis to an artist who wishes to work primarily in the medium of paint. 

 

Located in Callan, Co. Kilkenny, Teskey spent a year embedded in the surrounding ancient woodland of Castlemorris, an estate that was once a 12th century Norman demesne. For a number of years, Teskey had contemplated working in the forests, so the residency fell ideally onto his temporal radar. Working first en plein air, he then returned to the studio to scale up the works. 

 

What emerged is a series of what is best described as ‘woodscapes’ – lush, living rectangles of primeval forest, the lungs of all life, a coniferous woodland of broadleaf trees, including oak, beech, birch, larch, and ash. Teskey’s technical skill brings these unpeopled sections of ancient forest to our contemporary sightline. What could be more valid than a record of that which sustains us, the trees which do no harm but give us the air we breathe, now in the crosshairs of our conscience, at the mercy of climate change.

 

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For a full list of the works in the exhibitions please contact the gallery.
 

 

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