Tuesday, December 16, 2008

The Táin




I was lucky enough to be invited to a Louis le Brocquy gallery opening back in Dublin in 96. My wife who was a lot more knowledgeable of his work than I was at that time had a brief conversation with him and found him to be a very pleasant, affable old gent.

I always had a great love for his work on The Táin. His spot illustrations were completely suited to the subject matter and captured the story perfectly. Just beautiful work.

More of the illustrations can be found here:www.anne-madden.com

I should note what brought this post to mind was Rob Davis's recent post on the late great Michael Charlton.

"Mike once told me that his vision - his idea of the perfect illustration - would be a single line that looked so natural, so unforced, that it could just as easily be a spill from an ink bottle or a stream of smoke. But within that line he imagined an entire army laying siege to a craggy castle. It would be an image so unassuming that it concealed its beauty by appearing to be an accidental blemish. And yet when the viewer chose to focus on it they could discern all the information: the battered helmets, chipped swords, split shields, rocks, crumbling walls and all the emotion: the bleakness of the day, the striving of the army, the bucking of scared horses and the shouts of the men. It's a wonderful idea and it will remain stuck in my head forever."

4 comments:

Scaramanga said...

I actually used image in the painting "the Morrígan" as inspiration for part of my new short script.

Sadly it worked it's way out in later drafts, but without it I would have been lost!

Charles

Michael Reid said...

You're right, it is lovely stuff.

joe ackerman said...

he's really good, isn't he? thanks for the link. I enjoyed that.

Scaramanga said...

OK, so checked out The Day the Earth Stood Still, DEFINATELY BAD!