Michael Flatley (1958- )

"Rossmore Island,
Mixed media on board,
Signed

The painting, which successfully pushes the boundaries of contemporary art, reflects the artist’s ongoing engagement with the Great Famine, a tragedy that decimated Ireland during the second quarter of the nineteenth-century. The ghostly landscape of a once vibrant island now devoid of people, lends its name to the title.

Icy blue waters make up the torrents of waves that crash against the Kerry coast: waves that have carried both the living and the dead. The work explores a sea of plenty that simultaneously teased and tormented the famine-stricken land.

Broad strokes of blue run diagonally and horizontally in an endless flow of tears that merges with a sea obliterating the amber richness of the land. The dark black beneath serves to symbolise the plagued and tortured islanders as they struggle to escape from the vice-grips of death. The mighty sea beguiles the living as the relentless waves – like sinister hands of greed – snatch mercilessly from the island.
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"41¾ x 41 inches; 106 x 104 cm.
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