The Artists

This collection of Giclée Prints are from the Tír is Teanga Collection (2001) by Robert Ballagh.

Part of a series of ten innovative paintings, these works are the artist's first full-scale meditation on the Irish landscape, a subject he had avoided for many years beacuse of what he percieved to be its often reactionary or escapist artistic overtones.  This series melds vistas of a harbour, a mountain, fog, night, a tree, an island, a fort and the ocean with panels incorporating literal elements from nature - gold leaf on pebbles and a limestone panel.

By using Gaelic titles and inscribing a traditional Irish proverb onto a section of each work, Ballagh is reclaiming an essential part of the Irish landscape.

Each print is one of a limited edition of ten and is numbered and signed by the artist

The core of my practice focuses primarily on painting and drawing. The work as a whole is based on situations of civil unrest and military control, largely drawing on, but not confined to, my experience growing up in the north of Ireland. The buildings and housing areas in the drawings are often subject to physical control by the military and in some cases were designed and planned with the help of military technicians to ensure containment of an insurgent population. The recent works are executed in black and white, with the surrounding white space referring to aspects of purity, cleanliness or control.

The paintings that I produce directly refer to the history of portrait painting, in particular the works of Velasquez and Goya, and are an attempt to examine the pathology of power. The aim of all the work is to raise questions relating to the control of space and to explore the various manifestations of social order.

My work is primarily inspired by nature and by my own awareness of being part of it, by being immersed in it, inseparable from it, nature as ‘being’,  as both exterior and interior.  The mountain, the water, the flower, the grass, everything is alive, and inseparable from the aliveness of me, the observer and the observed.

The four pieces shown are depictions of one small corner of West Cork, Ireland,  This corner goes by the name of Garranes, or Bracluain, Aillihies, Castletownbere. I live half my time in Garranes and half in Carlow.