Hughie O'Donoghue RA (b.1953)
Night Swimmer III (2003)
Oil on canvas, 80 x 110cm (31½ x 43¾")
Signed, inscribed and dated 2003 verso

 

The human figure immersed in water, or in the earth, is a key...

Hughie O'Donoghue RA (b.1953)
Night Swimmer III (2003)
Oil on canvas, 80 x 110cm (31½ x 43¾")
Signed, inscribed and dated 2003 verso

 

The human figure immersed in water, or in the earth, is a key motif in Hughie O’Donoghue’s paintings over several decades. As early as 1984 one work, Liquid Earth, confirms that there is an equivalence between the two elements for him. He was inspired by the preserved, centuries-old bodies recovered from peat bogs, a source of fascination for many, including artists and poets.  O’Donoghue has said that he sees the painter as a kind of emotional archaeologist, working the surface to unearth what is within it, a metaphorical concept linked to his concerns with memory, history and place. The painter recalls, recovers and marks experiences both personal and universal, normally invisible against a background of grand historical narratives. Both his parents  were of Irish origin, and he has made significant bodies of work inspired by the layers and paths of family histories.

 

A couple of years prior to making this painting, he had been in Italy, retracing some of his father’s footsteps as the allies advanced through Italy during the Second World War. He was greatly struck by the Tomb of the Diver at Paestum, a painting in which a figure plunges from the Pillars of Hercules into the unknown. Some of his father’s photographs captured allied soldiers enjoying a few moments of peace on the beach and in the water at Cumae. There were also the striking examples of those caught in the eruption of Vesuvius, captured in plaster casts. All of these sources, and more, are bound up in the dreamlike images of the Night Swimmers, materialising out of the depths, dazzling examples of the painter’s tonal brilliance and his mastery of contemporary depiction of the human image.

 

Aidan Dunne, 2023

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