Art McKay's "Effulgent Image"

Naomi Jackson Groves said of Art McKay's Effulgent Image that it

has the mesmeric magnificence of some far-off sun a billion years of age

Was it Comte who was certain we would never observe the surface of a star other than our sun?

From the CPU heatsinks problem, here is an idea for ensuring that the fuzzy star is at its best when viewed through a Newtonian telescope: a fan.

see: astronomical interferometer, interferometry, angular resolution, diffraction limit,Wm Herschel,aperture masking interferometry,speckle interferometry

Arthur Fortescue McKay's technique, quote:

 [...] in 1997, Dr. David Howard described the painter’s  technique  as relatively simple. First, a layer of white  latex  paint was placed on  masonite  board. Then, using a scraper, McKay would create a rough geometric  shape  with a  series  of concentric lines or circles. Three dimensional  texture  was kept to a minimum [...]as any ridges of paint would be sanded or tapped down to maintain the two dimensionality of the geometric designs. The latex would be allowed to dry overnight before proceeding to the most important stage of paint application. (In many paintings a layer of another  colour  of enamel paint would be applied to create  colour  variation),” Howard notes. “The next day McKay would pour a layer of Northstar Stovepipe Enamel paint over the latex and then would scrape the  surface  again, very hard, from the centre outwards to the edge of the circle, square or rectangle being represented. The scouring of the  surface  reveals both the  latex  and residual enamel paint creating a materially flat image with extraordinary visual depth. (Howard, 2006)

Romeo Savoie

I arrived at Ingrid Mueller'a Gallery in time to see the packing blanket about the Jean Rooney electric night over and along the Dublin Liffey.

For a while I sat filling note cards before Romeo Savoie's layered diptych, Fan IV. The the pair that form a companion diptych for me: two multi-media on paper, one with flowing black strands, almost a complex Kanji on a fond of rose and yellow with a grey-green, almost carrés, on a dull red, almost the pastel aurora of Fan IV, but there a palette knife left only edges of ochre  — and next to it, the "action" of whites and white-grays, a red stippling on grey.  Nearby, on a table, stood the small "untitled diptych" in a black frame two six-by-eight inch canvas panels, each dominated by white brush strikes, the inverse of Kanji, one over reds, one over a yellow stencilled beginning of an alphabet. The latter, a Kanji morphing from white to black through Möbius twining, twists from black to white.

The great Philip Iverson portrait of Elie Wiesel was not available in the gallery.  I did not ask to see the carmine and emerald piece.

Fan IV may be dripping stove paint from what appears embossed gold but what is, on canvas, an overlaid piece, divided, occupied by arachnoid figures, mirror of a figure. (See: Mirrors of Gold.)  The great blinded Zeiss Teleskop of the Sternwarte of Zürich has no gold mirror.

Fan IV may be dripping stove paint but a palette knife was at work, as was such a tool in Art McKay's Effulgent Image, also seen here.