A provocative piece, the work had been used, with its artist’s permission, on an anti-nuclear-power poster in the 1970s. “It’s the notion of an embryo needing to be protected from the environment by having a gas mask,” Finucane says. In subsequent decades, he was largely forgotten by the art world, his work left to gather dust. He drew from images ripped from newspapers – a practice forbidden at art college – and would etch on bread paper, the thin tissue used to wrap loaves. “Very optimistic.”Donal O’Sullivan: An Artist Remembered, by Paul Finucane and Brendan Lyons, is published by Red Barn; it is available from cnocbuiarts.ie/publications and selected bookshops

Source: The Irish Times November 09, 2025 15:55 UTC