Ged Quinn (b. 1963)

Painted in 2007 The Saints Go Marching to All the Popular Tunes is a dark take on Claude Lorrain's Landscape with the rest on the Flight into Egypt (Noon) from 1661, presenting a modern dystopian scene set in a barbaric but simultaneously mesmerising world. Where Lorrain's idyllic landscape depicts the Holy Family at rest, accompanied and protected by God's, envoy on their successful attempt to evade the wrath of King Herod, Quinns distinctly static work reveals, in the same Romantic setting two stagnant and decaying caravans which have no such aspiration. Where the 17th century observer could look at the Lorrain unperturbed, safe in the knowledge that Christ would prevail, Quinn's subjects have evidently been abandoned by God; the ominous figure of Virgin Mary in Quinns rendering has neither hands nor face. The solar system too, represented here in the foreground, is composed of viruses: Ebola, HIV, herpes, polio offer no celestial relief. Quinn's choice of Lorrain's landscape presents a contradiction. If modern society is bleak and ugly, he seems to indicate the beauty of the landscape bathed in gentle light, and the classical ruins remain standing - a poignant and perhaps a hopeful standing reminder of the heights to which mankind once ascended.