Jack B. Yeats: Ireland's Painter

JACK B. YEATS
Canal Water, c.1930
oil on panel
Collection of Brian P. Burns

Canal Water

Yeats's oil paintings have an emotional immediacy and fluidity which is created through his use of a brush, a palette knife, a brush handle, the paint tube itself or occasionally even his fingers for the application of the paint. Canal Water shimmers with movement, its shores teeming with plant life. The swift horizontal strokes of the water flowing past the quick vertical strokes of the plants and grasses that spring from the water¹s edge. All the colors possible in nature seem to be layered together, running into, over, and through each other. The painting hums with the assorted noises which occur at a riverside.