Gerard Dillon (1916-1971) The Wonderful Farm Machine Mixed media, 56 x 76.5cm (22 x 30") Signed

Gerard Dillon (1916-1971) The Wonderful Farm Machine Mixed media, 56 x 76.5cm (22 x 30") Signed Exhibited: "Gerard Dillon, New Collages", The Dawson Gallery, 1-17th May 1969, Cat No. 5; where purchased by the current owner An admirer of Marc Chagall, the artist's work from 1967 depicts complex multi-layered images often from the artist's subconscious, which are open to interpretation. Anxiety of his mortality following the death of his three brothers may have caused the artist's interest into Jungian psychology which led him to a deep psychological preoccupation to search for answers. The artist commented about these images "I have been able to use my subconscious and yet control it. It's poetic, and yet more colourful…"(Belfast Newsletter, 21/4/67) "The Wonderful Farm Machine" exhibited at the artist's solo show at the Dawson Gallery in 1969 is similar to another work sold in these salerooms "Clowns on a Bog" (lot 123, 2/6/10, see image) where the appearance of two masked Pierrot appear in a mountainous landscape with a farm machine. At first glance, the figures appear as farm labourers chasing birds from a wheat field, but the fantastical farm machine causes us to revisit the scene. The image may depict two worlds, the artist in an imagined or dream world, and living in his present one. The striped bird, Pierrot and machine may belong to the "poetic colourful world". The seated Pierrot with mannequin-like features resembles the artist's work from the 1950's, when the local people in the West of Ireland were captured resting against haystacks. To the left the jumping Pierrot draws the viewer to the shapes in the sky. The shapes may be clouds that represent his three brothers, Joe, John and Patrick. The Pierrot appears excited by the clouds, but may also be agitated by their proximity. Could the unadorned Pierrot, bird and clouds reflect the artist's conscious fear of his mortality? Perhaps in endeavouring to deal with his anxieties, the artist wished to depict a supernatural place, a landscape drawn from his memories of summers in Connemara, where a wonderful farm machine appears to be harvesting in a vivid yellow landscape. Influenced by the avant-garde artist Pablo Picasso, the artist loved to experiment with techniques and different approaches to image making. The landscape appears momentarily to be naturalistic, but by combing the paint while still wet, the lines accentuate rhythms, and the various cuts outs add texture and intensity to an otherwise flat image. Karen Reihill, who is currently researching the life and work of Gerard Dillon