BETWEEN AN ELEGY AND THE MOUNTAINS
My Father’s Work Shed: Paintings and Poems by Bart O’Reilly | Resource Publications, 2022
When I first read My Father’s Work Shed: Paintings and Poems, I was subject to a wild ride of inspiration, and the result was equal parts euphoria and confusion. I felt compelled by the tension between two very different forms of expression, and my own working habits in responding to each of them, which have occupied different parts of my mind, and my world view, for some years preceding. The impetus to express one’s self in either images or words is not merely a matter of choice, but a mark of temperament. Some people do both well, and this is to O’Reilly’s credit.
While already a recognized talent as a painter in the United States and his native Ireland, O’Reilly’s desire to make a written testament to his father presented a conundrum. Would the poems be good enough? Would they stand up not only for their chosen subject, the legacy left to us by our parents, extended families, and neighborhoods of friends and shared experiences? Of the people and places that warm or haunt us. The memory of our parents, from those first burgeoning experiences, when the objects and spaces that represent a parent, someone both dear to us and at the same time emblematic of our feelings on what matters in the world. A ‘work shed’ is a space filled with the labors of an adult man, who can appear as a hero or a demigod to a young child, and later in life, can be seen in terms of the practical efforts that a man applies his working knowledge not only to specific tasks, but also spends some hours of his free time pursuing the kind of wisdom that accrues in accumulated work experience and by the introspection such spaces allow. Thinking of one’s father, various recognitions lead to a realistic understanding of the man and his life that lends itself to poetic truth.
Inspiration often proves more powerful that we may imagine. It may force us to express ourselves well outside normal limits. As both a painter and a poet, Bart O’Reilly understands the divergent nature of meaning, as it flows from his personal history in Ireland, his connection to place and family remains strong. His new book is comprised of both paintings and poems, to my mind a unique sort of publication, but one which fulfills both his needs and ours. For the mind is like this: when it reaches a limit, it turns naturally in another direction. Creatively and interrogatively, the author and his reader experience the landscape of meaning that expands into colors and then into words, as he explores feelings that run so deep they may never be adequately plumbed. Yet the adventure is in reading and looking. This is what he brings to us.
O’Reilly speaks of the recent death of his parents, and of his estrangement from a homeland now far away. The land itself remains, but it’s the connection to time through family that ceases. Memories remain, and the stories were told to us of times past, of histories and legacies passed on. The title of his book transports us to a time and place more specific than we may understand. It’s the sort of space that fathers carve out for themselves, where the activities that set men apart can be completed as well as examined. It’s a private space in which the traditionally manly duties merge with the personality of the man himself, and as a space separate from all others in domestic life, it allows him to commune with his own nature. Its contents are dictated by whatever duties he may specifically fulfill. But it’s also filled with his presence, and to a young child, it represents everything that may never be known about the father as a man. It’s a storehouse of contained memory, and its objects become artifacts after the man’s passing
O’Reilly’s paintings represent a repeated attempt to evoke his hometown area in the mountains surrounding Dublin. These paintings evoke the place but they also describe them in very certain terms. To live in such a lush environment leaves its imprint upon the soul. Their Impressionistic spirit is palpable, and like those from a century or more ago, they understood that the characters articulated by the senses were the metier of artists alone until they could be successfully communicated, and then they could become a record of sensate knowledge aside from being art. These paintings may seem predominantly ethereal, but that’s because despite the specific details of place, a location becomes a welter of impressions rather than a sequence of pictures. Most people may never share the experiences Bart O’Reilly had in the mountains, but he brings them together in an epic yet intimate manner. So here we have been placed, upon reading his book, between an elegy and the mountains. We can decide which is better, or we can keep reading.
DAVID GIBSON is a freelance writer in the arts. He is available to write essays for monographs, exhibition catalogs, text for web sites, grant and residency applications, and to provide critical thinking in matters of portfolio development, studio practice, and professional etiquette. He can be contacted at davidgibsonwriting@gmail.com