The Spike is City Toxic
30x30cm
Plein air oil on board
I drove into Dublin a few weeks ago to drop a painting into an exhibition and brought my paints with me. In the car a thought spoke up saying that I would name my painting ‘the spike is cytotoxic’. Rather odd.
I had a vague intent to paint a bridge near Macken Street but I ended up on the quays painting this view. A nice old lady came along and remarked how ugly Liberty Hall made the skyline and she remembered it being erected. I replied the Spire is worse and I cant imagine ever liking it the way Liberty Hall or the Poolbeg Towers fit into the skyline after a few years. Then it clicked, the spike is city toxic.
Maybe it was intuition, maybe the Daemon, but its steered me well over the years.
Cunard Portal Dolmen
Not far from the Hellfire Club in Dublin. Truly beautiful spot.
30x30cm plein air oil on board finished en studio.
Nice to spend a few hours staring at this. The temptation is to wax nostalgic about our ancestors and what they were trying to do with these megaliths and how they could manage to lift such heavy stones. A bit like the noble savage fallacy. But the thought occurred to me that maybe these were elitist monuments of the psychopathic control grid of the time. What would the common man of the time have thought of these stones I wonder.