Donagh McCarthy

Donagh McCarthy
1 Wreck
2003.
Oil and mixed media on paper
44 x 36 cm
Purchased from the artist’s solo exhibition at The Carlinn Gallery, Carlingford in 2006.

Donagh McCarthy holds a BA from NUI Galway, an MA from UCD and an MSc from Trinity College Dublin.He was one of the original members of The Droichead Arts Centre, and a former editor of the North East Arts Review. He has exhibited his work across Ireland.

Read more about this work here:
“The Wreck paintings belong to a larger body of work that began, if only in inspiration, in 1999 and was intended to comment on the turn of the century. My idea was to observe the time, to stand witness and mark the change from one age to another. They are loosely based around the shipwreck of The Irish Trader, which came to ground on Baltray beach on the east coast of Ireland early in 1974. This ship was due to dock in Drogheda port when high seas and engine failure saw it pulled past the mouth of the Boyne and lodged onto the beach. Attempts to re-float the ship failed and it was quickly set upon in a salvage operation. Crucially, what is suggested in these works is the perennial contradiction: that which is evanescent and steadfast, that which is beyond us and indifferent, but that to which we belong. They allude to the fact that our thoughts too get stuck, plans wrecked, lives become something else in our daily transition and weathering. I know now that what I thought as a boy to be unusual is commonplace. Our physical and psychological landscape, like our coastline, is crowded with wrecks.”

Some of Works