A painting “danced onto canvas” by Lord of the Dance Michael Flatley has been valued at up to €30,000 ahead of its auction next week. Sheppard’s auctioneers in Dublin held a private viewing for invited guests of the painting ‘Rossmore Island’.
Sheppard’s said that the painting “successfully pushes the boundaries of contemporary art” and had already attracted interest from potential bidders in London, Hong Kong and Los Angeles.
The canvas, which measures 106 by 104 cm, will go on public view on Saturday morning in the saleroom in Durrow, Co Laois where it will go under the hammer on Thursday, December 4th.
Mr Flatley is expected to dance on stage in Dublin for the last time in March next year when his latest show Lord of the Dance: Dangerous Games plays at the 3Arena. Last year he announced he would be embarking on a new career as a visual artist.
He has been painting in a studio housed in converted stables at Castlehyde estate in Co Cork where he does not use a brush but, instead, dances on paint-spattered canvases to create the images.
Mr Flatley has already sold two of his paintings at auction for charity. In 2011 he donated a canvas titled I to an auction, organised by Sheppard's, to raise funds for Dublin's Christ Church Cathedral, which sold for €5,600 to an unnamed Dublin businessman who had bid by telephone .
Before he brought the hammer down, auctioneer Michael Sheppard addressed the saleroom: “Don’t blame me in a few years’ time when we see these going for millions.”
Earlier this year, Mr Flatley donated a painting titled Opening Night to a charity auction in the London Palladium theatre which sold for £35,000 to a South American bidder.
However, next week’s auction will be first occasion when one of his paintings goes up for sale without the ‘safety net’ of charity bidders. The estimate for Rossmore Island is €20,000-€30,000.
Mr Flatley told The Irish Times that Rossmore Island is one of a series of paintings he has made on the theme of the Great Famine and is an abstract depiction of the island in Kenmare Bay off the coast of Co Kerry where "a torrent of waves crash against the ghostly landscape of a once-vibrant land".
He said “the broad strokes of blue, depicting an endless flow of tears, merge with the sea to obliterate the amber richness of the land; and the dark black beneath represents the plagued and tortured islanders as they struggle to escape from the vice-grips of death”.
Last year, Mr Flatley presented one of the paintings in the series, titled The Walking Dead – an abstract depiction of victims of the Famine – to Taoiseach Enda Kenny who accepted it "on behalf of the State".
