George Russell

Carla Point Edge, On the Beach

Russell once remarked, "What I want to do is to paint landscape as if it had no existence than in the imagination of the Divine Mind." W.B. Yeats called him "a mystic of the medieval type," and A.E.'s capacity to conflate the visionary and the real is seen in his many portraits of mythical Irish gods placed in actual Irish locations, such as Rosses Point in County Sligo. In Carla Point Edge-on the Beach, A.E. paints a silvery strand seen at either sunrise or sunset. The borders between earth and sea, and sea and sky are blurred, and the cool, clear tones of the colors suggest an environment still in a pristine, almost virginal state. A small figure has wandered into this Edenic scene and kneels in the foreground. It is difficult to determine whether the figure is male or female, or what task it is performing. Is the figure harvesting mussels from the pools revealed at low tide, or simply collecting sea shells? Or perhaps we see an image of a medieval mystic kneeling in homage to the melding of untouched earth, sea and sky in a liminal moment between day and night.