A decade of Delargy

ON SHOW ‘Europa and the Bull III’, by Diarmuid Delargy, part of his current exhibition at Ballina Arts Centre.

‘Here and Now’, an exhibition of work by renowned painter, sculptor and print-maker Diarmuid Delargy was officially opened in Ballina Arts Centre last week. All of the artworks, which include oils and watercolours, were made over the last ten years.
“This exhibition is a vignette of studio concerns of mine over the past nine years,” the Belfast-born artist explains. “There are several main recurring themes based around the dominant motif of ‘Art and Extinction’. These works are a visual conversation, loosely referenced, informed by time spent in print-making, particularly intaglio, with all its richness and tonal subtlety.”
The exhibition includes works from ‘The Shark/Tope Series’, which Delargy describes as ‘a visual conversation about the onslaught on the environment wrought by the relentless consumption of our era’; ‘The Atelier/The Circus Animals’ Desertion Series’, inspired by the Sligo landscape where he now lives; and the ‘Crete Series’, inspired by time the artist spent on the Greek island some years ago.
As a printmaker Delargy has few equals in an art form that has often been associated with sweet images of pastoral retreat. The marks of his drawing technique never find fixed, formal, definitions, but are always in a swirling search for an allusive presence that leaves traces of where they have been. His work in this medium includes a suite of 24 prints based on a text by Samuel Beckett, created with the Nobel Laureate’s own written approval. He has also collaborated with Irish poet Ciaran Carson and the Oxford chair for poetry Paul Muldoon on a handmade book in New York.
This interest in print has gone on to inform Delargy’s entire body of work. “My interests don’t necessarily lie just in painting; I’ve had protracted spells of making prints, particularly etching and lithography. I have spent considerable time in Berlin in 1987 and 2012 as well as Munich in 2014, working on a variety of print projects. The experience of print has certainly affected my painting.”
Commenting on the Shark Series, the artist explains that the works are characterised by – and loosely associated with – his own ideas about art and ‘deep time’: “The nature of this work has been a series of ongoing oil sketches developed into bigger and more significant aspects of these studies in larger canvas and/or board, using oil as the main medium.
“To date this has taken on a motif, that of a tope or a shark, a homage to the European natura morta tradition with a twist on the Pieta. Reckoned to be one of the oldest creatures on the planet, a product of the ‘deep time’, sharks have reached the end of their evolution, which makes them perfect – nature has perfected them.
“For me, sharks are vehicles to express oneself, I’m attracted by the idea of trying to paint and draw perfection; conceptually it’s thought provoking – the imperfect responding to the perfect.”
Delargy, who studied the University of Ulster and the Slade School of Fine Art in London, is a member of Aosdana, The Royal Society of Painter/ Printmakers, London and the Royal Ulster Academy. He has exhibited widely, both nationally and internationally, with shows in Las Vegas, New York, San Francisco, Paris and Berlin and elsewhere. He has received numerous bursaries and many awards for his work, including the Gold Medal at the European Large Format Print Exhibition, Dublin (1991). Delargy also recently collaborated with the poet Paul Muldoon in the limited edition publication Hard Drive in the United States.   

‘Here and Now’, by Diarmuid Delargy runs at Ballina Arts Centre until August 26. Admission is free.