Dermot Healy traces the beginnings of Diarmuid Delargy’s painterly preoccupation with the power and vulnerability of indigenous Irish sharks in his new suite of paintings on show at Taylor Galleries, Dublin.
Diarmuid Delargy, painter, sculptor and printmaker, was born in Belfast in 1958. He is a member of Aosdana and the Royal Society of Painter-Printmakers and is now living in Co Sligo. A window from an old studio of his remains a constant image in the background of much of his recent work – a small cottage window looking in on what he now does – paint sharks, or more accurately, tope. Animals have always haunted his work. Out in Inis Oirr Island his paint spilled over into fish. Diarmuid Delargy set out on his series of sharks, read their history, observed them on TV documentaries and, when he discovered they were actually on the verge of extinction, they entered his creative spirit even more forcefully.
