National Collection of Contemporary Drawing
Tarraingt
Mac Gabhann, Don
1997, pencil on paper, 110 x 37 cm (National Collection of Contemporary Drawing)Don Mac Gabhann (1957- ) was born in Limerick. He supports his artistic career while also teaching art in a local secondary school and is heavily involved in Hurling, as a minor teams trainer.
Tarrington is a typical study of a Hurley (a stick used to strike the ball in the popular Gaelic sports game, hurling). An analytical study means that the artist has attempted to faithfully reproduce the object as he sees it. Don Mac Gabhann studied printmaking, and works primarily in print and drawing. He is passionately interested in hurling and currently manages a local team.
There are many different tools with which to draw and surfaces upon which to draw as there are artists. Mac Gabhann’s Tarrington is rendered in a familiar medium- graphite on paper. Graphite is a soft carbon compound used in the manufacture of pencils. The hardness of the graphite dictates the strength of the mark. Mac Gabhann has used a cris-cross shading technique called cross-hatching, a technique often used to represent subtle tonal change across an object.
There are several other drawings by Don Mac Gabhann in the gallery’s collection. These are not strict analytical studies and their subject matter is not so readily identifiable. Instead they focus on the composition on composition; geometric shapes and spaces appear to continue beyond the confines of the page. Resolution of the subject in these works is not contained within a single drawing, as in Tarrington.
