Puffin Sound by Rod Coyne

Rod’s original oil painting “Puffin Sound” is from a series paintings created in an experimental phase which led to Rod’s celebrated Atmospherics Collection. It is one of an ongoing series paintings created over 20 years in County Kerry, in the West of Ireland. Coyne’s painting would make the perfect addition to any home or office for art collectors and all with an Irish interest. It is signed on the front and carries a date and inscription by the artist on the reverse.

Rod Coyne on painting in Kerry

There’s a place where the waves crash, the tide heaves and the weather rolls onto the Kerry coastline from the Atlantic. That’s where you’ll find me clinging to a clifftop in the teeth of a storm. Battling the elements distracts from high-brow aesthetics and its more like a fight for survival. Its the energy of this completely elemental challenge which I hope to communicate with this painting – Rod Coyne.

Puffin Sound off the beaten-track in Kerry

Puffin Sound is the short but dramatic stretch of water separating County Kerry’s famous Puffin Island from the mainland. The heart-stopping drop of sheer cliffs into a sea is equally beautiful under a blue sky as a raging storm.

Puffin Island (Oileán na gCánóg in Irish) is an uninhabited steep rocky island lying off the coast of the Iveragh Peninsula, County Kerry, Ireland. Puffin Island is an Irish Wild-bird Conservancy reserve on a small island to the south of Valentia Island near Portmagee, County Kerry and separated from the mainland by a narrow sound. It holds some thousands of pairs of Manx Shearwaters, Storm Petrels and Puffins and smaller numbers of other breeding seabirds. The island may only be landed up on with the consent of IWC which tends to withhold permission from all except those carrying out bona fide research on the birds. Fishing boats can be chartered in Portmagee. The island can be seen quite well from the sea by the visitor who takes a boat trip to the Skelligs from Portmagee.

Atmospherics is a series of paintings by Rod Coyne

Atmospherics is a series of new works by Rod Coyne capturing the environment and weather in Ireland.  In the last two years, he has made the switch from acrylic paints to oils, giving his paintings a deeper more vibrant essence.  In Atmospherics, Rod experiments with his mediums creating a depth on the canvas and paper.  The layers of paint bring the viewer further into the picture giving a more three-dimensional experience than ever before.

“Atmospherics is the result of twelve months intensive experimentation. I have been re-interpreting my old haunts, the seascapes of Dublin and Killiney bays, the Wicklow Mountains and Cill Rialaig Co. Kerry. After painting plein air as usual, I take the canvases back to the studio and manipulate them. I have sent some images into such a tailspin that the original subject has become completely dissolved.” – Catalogue text from 2006.

Rod Coyne’s painting diary from 2009.