Jane Humphries previews ‘Luan tSleibhe’ a new suite of still-life painting from Geraldine O’Neill at Draiocht this autumn
In 2006, whilst researching in The Prado for her last exhibition ‘SÍ na Firinne’, Geraldine O’Neill became fascinated by the exquisite work St Anthony Abbot and Saint Paul the Hermit, (1642) by Diego Velázquez de Silva. In particular, she noticed the ominous, swooping raven delivering the Eucharist bread to St Paul. This is hardly surprising for an artist who has included birds as an ongoing trope. O’Neill’s paintings acknowledge the genre of still life as depicted by Pliny in his ‘parable to realism’, Natural History. In this work, Pliny describes the illusionist ability of the artist Zeuxis, who rendered grapes so life-like that the birds came and pecked them, and also of his rival Parrhasios, whose life-like curtain fooled Zeuxis into trying to open them.
