28 Jun Black Herds of the Rain – Dublin
I’m home in Ireland for 10 days painting a few walls and making another short film with Monsieur Andy Telling. Its a lil different this time, no soldiers or colonial garb. I decided to do a project a little more relevant to what’s going on in Ireland at the moment. For those that aren’t aware, Ireland is balls deep in a recession thanks to the Holy Trinity of Irish corruption – the politicians, bankers and developers.
I’ve always thought that we have a certain cowboy mentality in Ireland, maybe because we’re on the wild west of Europe or maybe because of our strong links to America over the centuries and I think its that cavalier bandit attitude that got us in so much trouble.
So I decided to paint cowboys. It ties in with my usual blurb about masculinity (blah blah blah) but I particularly like this image of the rodeo rider being thrown off his bull. In his 1936 poem ‘The Lost Heifer’, Austin Clarke refers to the Irish struggle for Independence as being like a cow wandering in the rain. So for this set of pieces I like the idea of the bull in all its wild and beastly glory representing the new Ireland while the cowboy represents the politicians who lost control of the country.
