Net
1993
Oil, Enamel and Nylon on Masonite 48x48"
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Net is a landscape, a view of the Lakes of Killarney, in Ireland. I was thinking of a couple of ideas, one from James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist As a Young Man, in which Stephen Daedalus talks about "nets" that bind and restrict him in his traditional culture and represent barriers to be transcended. I was primarily interested, however, in an idea that comes from Buddhism...a description of the way all things are interconnected in time and space. The image of the "Net of Indra" or the "Net of Gems" describes the phenomenon called "simultaneous mutual arising", and, if I can prosaically describe it, it suggests that all objects, in their own individual reality, by virtue of their own existence, reflect and support the reality and existence of all other objects, past, present, and future, none of which is the single, primary cause of any other object. At the same time, all things are ulimately void.

The painting is made from a fisherman's net, cut to size and glued on a Masonite panel. Some of the sky is sprayed enamel, and the rest of the painting is oil applied with a brush. I wore out several brushes in the process of painting over the knotty relief of the nylon net.

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please email Andy Feehan at andrew.feehan@gmail.com