WHYTE'S EXCEPTIONAL IRISH ART MONDAY 7 DECEMBER 2020

12 Donald Teskey RHA (b.1956) Donald Teskey was born in Co. Limerick and graduated from Limerick College of Art and Design with a Diploma in Fine Art in 1978. He came to prominence as an artist through his skill as a draughtsman during the 1980s with several significant solo exhibitions and for nearly thirty years has produced an important and extensive body of works chiefly inspired by the Irish landscape. He is a member of the RHA and an elected member of its Council. He is also a member of Aosdána. The Arts Council established Aosdána in 1981 to honour artists whose work has made an outstanding contribution to the arts in Ireland, and to encourage and assist members in devoting their energies fully to their art. Membership, which is by invitation from current members, is limited to 250 individuals. Teskey has been the recipient of numerous awards, fellowships and residencies both nationally and internationally and his work has been exhibited in the UK, USA, Canada, China, Germany, France, Finland and South Africa. Collections include the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Arts Council of Ireland, corporate and private collections worldwide. He is represented by Oliver Sears Gallery, Dublin, Dolan/Maxwell Gallery, Pennsylvania, USA and Art First Contemporary Art, London. Donald Teskey is one of Ireland’s leading contemporary painters, even though he began painting belatedly, having been long established as a graphic artist. His earliest works are virtuoso drawings of desolate city streets, and the fabric of the city, mostly Dublin, remained his central subject matter when he began to apply himself to painting. He is a hard-working perfectionist and the technical flair characteristic of his drawings is also fully evident in his handling of oil paint, which is exceptional and innovative. Never content to settle into a predictable pattern, he has consistently embraced fresh artistic challenges. Just when it seemed that he could safely be classified as an urban artist he ventured out into the wide open spaces, visiting Cape Clear Island off the coast of West Cork and Ballycastle in North Mayo, where he stayed during a fellowship at the Ballinglen Arts Foundation. His urban landscapes had relished the drama of architectonic spaces, the intricate sculptural patterns created by jumbles of buildings, roads, bridges, canals and railways, all defined by the play of light and shadow. As it happened, he found that this pictorial language worked exceptionally well in a completely different, natural environment. It is notable that the artist realised that the scale of the subject matter required a corresponding sense of scale in its treatment, so that a great deal of his coastline works are imposingly big. But rather than being big just for the sake of it, their scale is really called for. Donald Teskey is a gestural artist, and the physicality of his paintings reflect the process of their making. Aidan Dunne Visual arts critic and contributor to The Irish Times