Belligerently blashphemous. A very naughty painting. Abominous Critic
Webdesign: Anja Coyne
www.anjacoyne.com
"The Skelligs Art Burning", Rod Coyne, 2005, oil on canvas, 90 x 65 cm
"I am a slave to visual reality,"
Rod Coyne claimed one spring day,
measured winter still by the tilt of the earth.
The rogue then proceeded to melt down
the jagged peaks of the Skelligs
with oil paint turned vitriol.
Remote and removed, all but eternal,
the Skelligs have held the foreground
to the horizon off St. Finian's Bay
even before old Finn was sainted-
since the glaciers slunk north anyway.
Wholesale destruction of Ireland's Gibraltar
smoulders before our disbelieving eyes.
The Skelligs are burning!
The Skelligs are burning!
A solvent of art-induced mutation
torments the Rock of Sages,
spattered in boiling white spray,
smoke-wrapped
in "Stygian-Soot Purple,"
which is not available
right out of the tube.
Darkness is visible
where the sea seizes stone.
Geothermal pulsations fold two dimensional
reality
into an illusion of crinkled depth.
Primal layers rust out dull orange.
Fireless flame subsumes submission
to the old rule of earth-bound discipline
that bonded the monks to molecules
of faith-polished footsteps.
The impenetrable essence of obdurate lives
flickers and streams towards heaven
in the congealed smoke of hell-
obscuring an otherwise lovely Kerry sunset.
Even Anselm "The Scorcher" Kiefer
would blush to immolate the Skellings,
yet Rod Coyne has melted
the last definite lines of Europe's edge.
It's all molten now.
James J. Bogan
Distinguished Professor of Art History,
University of Missouri-Rolla, USA
Cill Rialaig
March 2005