He'll Be on the Fiddle, I'll be on the Brush

This profile appeared in an edited form in the Sunday Times Culture magazine on 26 July 2015

 

Mick O'Dea, a founding member of the Independent Artists group, caused consternation amongst his fellow contrarians when he accepted the offer of membership of the RHA in 1993. "Nobody had ever elected me to anything before so I said why not." His friends were horrified: "It was the equivalent of someone taking the king's coin in their eyes or a doctrinaire Republican becoming a Free Stater." A hint there of another volte face by another man associated with East Clare. O'Dea has no qualms about his defection. He describes the current RHA "as being an amalgam of the Living Art, the Independent Artists, with a touch of the old Oireachtas" and believes it has absorbed the diversity promoted by those organisations. This seems a valid assertion when you consider the range of exhibits and styles in the recent annual shows, although traces of the old academy still linger in those leaden formal portraits and in the occasional bouts of incest where academicians paint each other. O'Dea's recent elevation to the presidency of the RHA follows 30 years of energetic engagement with the Irish art scene both as artist and teacher.

Born in Ennis, O'Dea inherited a work-ethic from his parents who from modest origins built up a business encompassing a pub, a grocery shop and a farm. An influential art teacher, Jim Hennessy, at St. Flannan's College pointed him in the direction of NCAD. He chose to avoid the more obvious choice of Limerick College of Art as he knew that being so close to home would entail pub duty at weekends. "I wanted to get as far away from Ennis as I could." Following graduation at NCAD he immediately began teaching night classes there and took part time work elsewhere including King's Hospital and St. Edmundsbury Hospital - the mental health facility. He was involved with Brian Maguire and Theresa McKenna in setting up and teaching the Art in Prison programme and for a period taught art to both the Provisionals and the INLA in Portlaoise. He also taught at Dun Laoghaire College of Art for five years. All the while O'Dea was painting and honing his talent but was biding his time. "All my work in education ensured that I wasn't dependent on the art market and could develop my voice as an artist free from commercial pressure". But he was determined not to turn into a full-time teacher by succumbing to the siren call of the pension. He was given the perfect opportunity when he was elected to Aosdana. The resultant Cnuas cut him loose and in 1999 he gave up teaching and became a full-time artist.

This has been his life since that date. It hasn't always been easy. "For me the boom time wasn't a particularly good time. My main way of surviving has been portrait commissions." This uneasy survival is reflected in the number of galleries he has been associated with. After leaving NCAD he was keen to show at the Lincoln Gallery where fellow Independent Artists gathered. However after a few group shows he wasn't offered any further encouragement and through the efforts of Charlie Brady he got his first solo show in Taylor Galleries in 1983. It was very successful: "Dr. John Cooney came in and he bought a swathe of them. I took it for granted. This is what happens." The exhibition consisted of landscapes and rural scenes including cattle. His parents had always been supportive of his career choice but this success particularly resonated with his father. "When he thought of the time and effort he had to put in getting a bullock ready for market and compared it to the money I made from a painting of one he decided there must be something in this game." But disillusion was to follow this auspicious start as subsequent shows attracted scant attention and he decided to change galleries when Taylor Galleries was slow to schedule a new show. He moved on to the Rubicon for a period and following his election to the RHA he began to show at that venue. He also found a sympathetic home at the Kevin Kavanagh Gallery and has been showing with him for the past 14 years - culminating in his striking trilogy of exhibitions dealing with the aftermath of the 1916 Rising: Black and Tan, Trouble, and The Split.

One of the reasons for O'Dea's erratic relationship with commercial success may be his insistence on trying new things. Many successful artists, in Ireland and elsewhere, have a signature style so that when you buy a piece its recognisable as being by that specific artist. Everyone, for example, recognises a Felim Egan. With O'Dea it's not so easy. You might get get toy soldiers, confrontational nudes, portraits, historical tableaux, landscapes and even cardboard sculptures. "My model was always Picasso" he says in explanation of this eclectic approach. "I liked the way that after Cubism he moved on to neo-classicism." Despite O'Dea's cleaving to the academy his artistic influences are from further afield. While his work is figurative he doesn't look to Orpen or to Keating but rather to German Expressionism - especially Kokoschka, Auerbach, and Schiele. The first-named perhaps predominates as an influence but Édaín, an expressive and sexually frank series of nudes he did in 1998, is positively Schielesque. By way of contrast he has a fine portrait of Brian Friel in the National Gallery.

A recurring feature of the Irish art landscape is the bitter chorus of disaffected artists whose work has failed to make it into the annual RHA show. O'Dea is very open about the matter. "It's very difficult to get in." This year there were 2,600 works submitted and only around 14% got through. These made up around 60% of the show. The other 40% is made up of work by the academicians and selected artists. The latter group is selected by the council that oversees the annual show. One of the benefits of having selected artists is that they tend to submit larger works knowing that they will be accepted. "otherwise the show would look like a stamp collection". O'Dea sees the occasional rejection entailed by the process as being part and parcel of an artist's lot. He points to his own experience with the Royal Ulster Academy (RUA). "In 2011 I was an invited artist. In 2012 I was an adjudicator. In 2013 I won the RUA Portrait Prize. In 2014 I was rejected. In 2015 I will submit again." A lesson there for all artists.

O'Dea's no nonsense approach to art is refreshing. He brings a rural authenticity into an area where urban preciousness often thrives. His impending gig at the Kilkenny Arts Festival is an exercise in demystification. It is also an indication of someone who is comfortable in his own skin and confident in his craft. For two weeks he will attend various events (concerts, plays etc.) and set up an easel to record the performers during the shows. "I'll be an embedded reporter using drawing as a media." The day after the performance he will select a participant for a more detailed painting in the studio he has set up in James Stephens Barracks. The studio will be open to the public for one and a half hours each afternoon from 9-16 August. He has already lined up Garry Hynes and Dearbhla Molloy for these sessions. He also hopes to enlist his cousin the fiddle player Martin Hayes who's performing at the Festival. "He'll be on the fiddle and I'll be on the brush." His finished portraits and sketches will be on display in a range of venues around the city.

Seeing O'Dea looking healthy and energetic in his RHA studio it's difficulty to imagine that it's just over a year since the horrific accident that nearly killed him. A pedestrian absorbed on his mobile phone walked out in front of his bike on O'Connell Street. O'Dea slammed on his newly serviced brakes and was sent somersaulting over the handlebars. He landed on his back and ruptured his spleen. Only the proximity of the Mater Hospital and some quick thinking fellow cyclists saved his life as he had suffered a massive internal bleed. Apart from having to take care of himself a bit more (" I mind the drink and take a small daily dose of antibiotics") there are no long-term effects. "I feel that I've had another chance in life." He had no hesitation in taking on the demanding role of President less than nine months later. "I feel that it's a very worthy endeavour". He sees the RHA as "a strong, robust institution run for artists that is trying to get the best artists as members." This is not always possible. When I queried the omission of certain artists from the roster of members he responded that: "Being elected to the RHA is not just an honour like being made a member of Aosdana. Now that you've been elected you must roll up your sleeves." Participation in the activities of the RHA is "an absolute requirement." This doesn't suit certain artists. O'Dea himself set a sterling example by becoming the first Principal of the revived RHA School in 2006. He is determined to make things happen during his term in office. In addition to engaging with a younger generation of Irish entrepreneurs to help reduce the RHA's considerable loan burden, he is keen to expand the programme of events in the building in Ely Place by developing the extensive basement area. He also sees his role as someone who will raise the profile of art in Ireland where he feels it lags behind other art forms through media neglect. He bemoans the absence of a supportive figure like Mike Murphy. "Within the popular media there's a general dumbing down and an omission of the visual arts - a lot of it has to do with the presenters and their priorities. We don't have a BBC4 to counteract this. There's no visual arts on the Saturday shows." He would like to see artists like Imogen Stuart contribute to the national debate. "She has a lot to say." So has this hard-working son of County Clare whose robust stewardship at the RHA should help raise the voice of Irish art and claim back some of the territory ceded to the more aggressively marketed arts.

 

 

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Eilís O'Connell: Profile of the Artist

 

A slightly edited version of this article appeared in the Sunday Times Culture magazine on the 3 May 2015.

You turn right off the Inniscara Road between Cork and Dripsey to get to Eilís O'Connell's studio - a converted creamery perched on a hill. The large and handsome steel gates open into a property well-furnished with examples of her formidable art - a stern woven steel piece here, a curvaceous purple and blue creation there. Their presence a surreal shock against the lush green backdrop of the Lee Valley. In this bucolic location one of Ireland's most successful artists creates her internationally acclaimed sculptures.

When the history of Cork's philistinism about art is being written, the saga of Eilis O'Connell's Great Wall of Kinsale will surely merit a chapter. The desecration of her 1988 sculpture has been well documented - the local council (amongst many other transgressions) painted over her corten steel structure despite her specific instructions not to do so. She is still angry nearly 30 years later: "It was torture, the whole thing was torture. I get physically ill passing it." During the subsequent controversy she had stones thrown at her, her car tyres slashed and was even refused service in some shops by the good citizens of Kinsale. It's ironic indeed to look over her career since that protracted debacle and see that the offending sculpture proved to be the foundation stone for her success at home and especially abroad. It was responsible for her winning the competition that led to her monumental Secret Station in Cardiff Bay. "I was taken seriously in Britain due to my 1988 piece The Great Wall of Kinsale. They could see that I worked big. They loved it, and I got great credit for it."

Her string of subsequent high-profile commissions in the UK include Vowel of Earth Dreaming its Root, in London Docklands and the award-winning Nyama in Bishopsgate. She has particular affection for her playful Pero's Bridge in Bristol. "That bridge is mad." She sees it occasionally as a backdrop in English TV programmes. "I get such a kick out of that." She also continues to reap a rich harvest internationally. In 2002 her large bronze Unfold was lent by the Cass Foundation to the Venice Biennale and her smaller sculptures were shown at the Guggenheim Museum. She has also shown at the Paris and Sao Paolo Biennales and is currently trying to finalise a large project in Hong Kong. Leaving Sean Scully to the Americans, there is a very strong argument for declaring her our best-known and most successful artist on the international stage. She hasn't been idle at home either. Since moving back to Ireland in 2002 she has completed Reedpod a 13.5 meter sculpture for Lapps Quay in Cork and her recent polished mirror steel tribute to E. S. Walton in Trinity. She is amongst the blessed of Aosdana, a founder of the Cork Sculpture Factory, a former member of the Arts Council and a long-standing member of the RHA.

Born in Derry, O'Connell moved to Cork with her family when she was ten. She always wanted to be an artist (three of her uncles painted) and pestered her parents to send her to art classes at the Crawford College of Art when she was 12. Later studying at the Crawford she came under the influence of the sculptor John Burke. He was a charismatic and influential teacher and an enthusiast for the hard-edged abstraction of David Smith. Burke's own career was dissolved in alcohol - a not uncommon fate for a visual artist in Cork. O'Connell's early work was influenced by Burke's modernism but she evolved into her own woman - with a sensibility more drawn to organic forms. She remains grateful for the encounter however, recalling with a smile his shouting "the fucking worst show you ever did" across a crowded Hendrik's Gallery opening. A typical Burke incident. Another Cork artist who influenced her was Maurice Desmond - for the example he showed her in living the life of the artist without compromise. "Maurice was the only full-time artist in Cork at the time. He showed me that it could be done." After a distinguished student career, various awards and fellowships followed. She was determined to broaden her horizons: "As a young artist I was always desperate to get out of Ireland." She was granted a fellowship at The British School at Rome in 1983, and a P.S.I. Fellowship for New York from the Irish Arts Council in 1988. After New York she won a two-year residency at Delfina Studios in London. "Delfina Studios were amazing, every 6 months we had to open our studios and I got to know people very quickly and started applying for shows and commissions." She ended staying in London until 2002 - settling in Deptford. Then a tragedy disrupted the smooth flow of her career. In 2001 her long-term boyfriend Herbie died suddenly. She was thrown by this event: "I had never been unhappy before". She felt the need to return to Ireland and to the support of family and friends. For a while she couldn't work: "I did feel that I'd never make another thing." But eventually she got back to work (completing a gravestone for Herbie) and adjusted to her new life. "I have discovered that solitude was the making of me." Although back living in Ireland, O'Connell has no romantic notions about the place. She doesn't particularly embrace being Irish: "My nationality is not an issue - I feel European." She maintains that "Ireland is a very hard country to be an artist in."

She looks outward to the international scene: "What's Gormley doing? What's Kapoor doing?"

There are two strands to O'Connell's career as an artist. In addition to the public and monumental side that makes the money, there is the smaller work that is best demonstrated by her critically acclaimed Haptic show at the RHA in 2011. Her larger works are created in her spacious well-equipped studio and adjacent barn. She is the first artist I have ever met with her own fork-lift. She also has a small studio on Crete where she creates smaller hand-worked pieces.

"The quality of light there is incredible and the silence of no power tools, I look at everything in a different way. I have no materials only the local amazing beeswax, in a way, the limited resources have given me great freedom."

She always thinks big - seeing virtually all her small pieces as scale models for larger works. "Almost every single thing I make is a model for something that could possibly be made big." Her public work she sees as a way of counter-balancing the ugliness of much modern development. She describes her large piece in London's docklands as "an organic antidote to a very ugly location". She prefers her work outside in the real world - subject to ageing and weathering. "In a museum it's like still being in the head." She sets a lot of store on the after care and maintenance of her public work and bemoaned the appalling state of John Burke's graffiti bedecked sculpture at the Wilton roundabout in Cork. "We have a whole culture of non-maintenance."

It's hard to pin O'Connell down to any particular style or school. There's a hint of Brancusi here and a touch of Henry Moore there (look at Sacrificial Anode in her Haptic show) - and now and then she goes back to her more hard-edged mentors such as David Smith and her late tutor John Burke. She is a restless and eclectic artist often just going where her experiments with materials take her. She is constantly playing with the possibilities of bronze, steel, epoxy resin, mirror polished stainless steel, and even Kevlar - the carbon fibre material used in bullet-proof vests. She once took possession of 1.5 kilometres of stainless steel cable. After leaving art college she worked for a while with hand-made paper - a medium she revisits occasionally. A striking example can be seen in the upcoming RHA annual show. She does what she feels like doing and what she did yesterday may be radically different to what she does today. She refuses to be a predictable, easily marketed product and pours scorn on artists like Tony Cragg who "keeps doing the same thing because he has to supply 55 galleries".

Most of the small bronzes in O'Connell's current show in Hillsboro Fine Art originated in Crete but were finished in her Cork studio. Some suggest teepees and she concedes that "the forms are about refuge and shelter". But she is impatient with those who look for metaphor or meaning in any specific work: "It has no significance whatsoever. It's just a yoke." A statement that typifies O'Connell's lack of arty preciousness. The title of the show is Khôra - a particularly slippery Greek term. You can travel from Plato to Derrida for a definition and still be none the wiser. Perhaps Martin Heidigger's formulation is the most applicable: a "clearing" in which being happens or takes place. O'Connell's work is equally difficult to define. She cannot be confined to any particular "ism". It is abstract but often with figurative resonances. It is classically severe but often with sexual intimations. Perhaps it's best to conclude that her sculptures exist, like Platonic forms, purely as things of beauty for our restful contemplation.

John P. O'Sullivan

 

 

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Paddy Graham and Vincent Price

An edited version of this profile appeared in the Sunday Times Culture magazine on the 12 April 2015.

Patrick Graham recounts with amusement a story about his early reputation in Dublin art circles. Confronted by one of his more fraught canvases in the Hugh Lane Gallery, a viewer confided to his companion: "poor Paddy, he's obviously very ill." This anecdote captures the common view at the time that Graham's often alarming and visceral paintings must be the incontinent spewings of a tortured psyche. Far from it. His art has evolved from his extensive reading in philosophy, especially Martin Buber, Nietzsche and Kirkegaard. These influences have led him towards the great romantic subjects: sexuality, death, and religion. He believes that art "is part of an older history made by those who saw in the dark". His paintings are essays about being and nothingness - about the religious and sexual antics of his stricken subjects as they flail about against a bleak grey background that suggests the Midlands skies of his youth. In his current show Away at John P. Quinlan's gallery at the Triskel, Graham continues his broadcasts from the brink of the abyss. Note the Sacred Hearts, the agonised self-portraits, the poignant sketch of the family rosary, the blood-red nudes, and the recurring references to mysteries. The Lamb of God is in contention with the sins of the world.

Graham's career has been a triumph - far from the myth of it being blighted by his alcoholism and occasional incarceration. He's a hard-working, successful painter, with an international reputation, living in domestic harmony in Dun Laoghaire. He has a keen interest in sport, especially rugby. (When we met he recounted, with the relish of a true fan, a recent encounter with Ciaran Fitzgerald.) He hasn't had a drink for nearly forty years and he paints every week day. He's a member of Aosdana ("a peripheral one" he says) and has work in the permanent collections of both IMMA and the Hugh Lane Gallery. He's not a big fan of the RHA but showed there when invited by David Crone. He is an outsider however in his healthy skepticism about all art clubs, academies and associations. He refused to show at the Exhibition of Living art in its time and even became skeptical of the Independent Artists group, although he did show with them for a period. He maintains that "the new Academy is the old Academy, but just a little more clever in the way it dresses and uses its voice in the very politicised world of contemporary art."

Born in Mullingar in 1943 his early childhood was marred by a series of family disasters. His father went to England when he was four and the family saw little of him thereafter. "Your father had a glint in his eye and was a rogue in his britches " Graham remembers being told years later by an old woman who stopped him in the street. His mother "scraped a living" for her young family for a while but then contracted TB and spent some time in a sanatorium. Graham was sent to live with his grand parents. He subsequently contracted rheumatic fever and became so sick that he couldn't walk and was confined to bed for nearly a year. In his confinement he became a voracious reader and started to draw using whatever materials came to hand. This reading habit and interest in art was carried on later with the help of an aunt who was the local librarian. He consumed books about art and artists. "When I was about ten I discovered Modigliani."

He went to school at the local technical college where his talent for drawing was spotted early by a sympathetic teacher, Dermot Larkin. Even now, talking to the artist more than 50 years later, his gratitude is palpable. He worked with Larkin every evening after class becoming in effect his apprentice. "Larkin taught me to be a watcher, a mixer, a colourist, a cartoon-maker and a scene painter. I remember copying Manet at 13." Graham's talents led him to achieve first place in Ireland in his Group Certificate art exam. Larkin was also influential in getting the precocious young artist a scholarship to the National College of Art. Blessed with painting skills and fluency of line, his prodigious natural talent meant he could already turn out effortlessly a polished academic study. He went straight from foundation year to second year. Money was tight with an absentee father, but Graham stuck it out and acknowledges the sympathetic support there of John Kelly and Maurice MacGonigal. He recalls his first visit to the life drawing class where the young country boy ran from the room in fright: "I hadn't seen a naked woman in my life." Such innocent days. He soon adjusted to his new environment and his path in life seemed set fair. "I was told by John Kelly that I'd be in the academy (RHA) by twenty-one."

But then came the fall. He recounts how an Emil Nolde exhibition came to Dublin and it revealed to the young painter the error of his ways. It showed him that art could be a vehicle for personal expression and that the academic painting was not real art at all. "I saw an Emil Nolde exhibition that absolutely destroyed me as a performer. I now knew I could no longer make art as a conscious aesthetic act." This revelation led to a cessation of painting and a general questioning. It also led to the pub. He discovered the delights of O'Donoghue's, Grogan's and McDaid's and spent endless hours debating the "what is art" question rather than exercising his talents. He met a wealthy American woman and they got together and revelled in the drunken bohemian life of Dublin in the Sixties. "It was", he recalls, "a great time for failed geniuses". His lost years followed and he did little painting between leaving art college in 1963 and 1974. "I was going in and out of mental hospitals". He remembers slipping into a coma in the Wicklow Hotel and being carried out to an ambulance. The breakthrough came in 1974 when a young psychiatrist suggested that he deal with his life as art: "make some drawings about your experiences here." He embarked on a series of studies of a patient called Joe and the resultant work became his first solo show at the Emmet Gallery. It was entitled "Notes from a Mental Hospital and Other Love Stories." He finally gave up the drink in 1978 and went from being one of the first patients at the Rutland Centre to becoming one of its mentors for alcoholics. He also met his future wife there. She's a psychologist and the artist maintains that "she's been a great source of balance and evenness."

His next tentative steps back into the art world came with the help of Trevor Scott who offered him some teaching hours at the Dun Laoghaire College of Art. He moved into a small studio in Royal Terrace West where a neighbour was the artist Brian Maguire. With Maguire's support he got into the Lincoln Gallery and began to show with the Independent Artists. A sympathetic review by Michael Kane helped the recovering artist on his way and soon he was a regular part of the Dublin art scene. His work however was difficult and not exactly designed for suburban walls, so sales were not great. He remained dependent on his teaching hours in Dun Laoghaire and later at DIT.

A chance occurrence in the early Eighties altered radically the trajectory of Graham's career. The actor and influential art collector Vincent Price came to Dublin on a cruise and was waiting outside the Lincoln Gallery one day when Leon De Sachy arrived to open it. He proceeded to buy three large paintings, removing them from their frames before he returned to his boat in the Alexandra Basin. Subsequently Price wrote to the artist and encouraged him to come to LA and show at the first LA International Art Fair, saying that "this stuff is essential for LA". Graham scraped together the money, aided by Vincent Ferguson from the Hendriks Gallery. He found himself at an enormous show amongst the elite of the international art world. His modest space at the periphery of the fair was ostentatiously favoured by Price and his extensive entourage, including his wife the actress Cora Browne. The attention of such a prominent collector did not go unnoticed. Graham was signed up by the Jack Rutberg gallery in LA and soon acquired a substantial following amongst the art lovers of that city. This is a rich seam of patronage that he continues to mine to this day, although sadly Vincent Price is long gone.

For a man who comes across initially as mild-mannered, even diffident, Graham has got some acerbic views on the Irish art scene and is not shy about expressing them. The provincialism of our artists is a particular bête noire. "They still retain the idea that if we imitate international art we become international. No. If you're from Mullingar, you're fucking international." Echoes there of another Patrick. And like Kavanagh, Graham uses his youthful experiences in rural Ireland to create art of universal import.

 

 

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Breathe by David Begley

 

David Begley has built a reputation on his haunting and surreal charcoal drawings - one of which featured at the last RHA annual show. The eerily atmospheric animations in this show are generated from the ghosts of charcoal drawings past. An initial drawing is photographed and then slightly modified, photographed again and modified again. The animations are built from thousands of these minutely altered images. The artist has also composed moodily apposite sound tracks to accompany us on our visits to his dream worlds. The overall feeling of the show is sombre and elegiac - with more than a hint of the Gothic weirdness of Mervyn Peake. Metamorphosis is the only constant. The tender and idyllic is transformed into the sinister and apocalyptic. Certain themes recur: birth, death, and especially regeneration. In Breathe a storm-tossed sea turns into a woman who proceeds to breathe life into a variety of exotic forms. Images of moons and eggs abound betokening fecundity. The piece ends alarmingly with a wolf-like creature looming over the landscape. These works eschew narrative. They are playgrounds in which we can immerse ourselves in Rorschachian reveries.

At he Linenhall Arts Centre

Castlebar

 

 

John P. O'Sullivan

 

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Martin Gale at Taylor Galleries

An edited version of this review (with a less horsey bias) was published in the Sunday Times Culture magazine on the 23 November 2011.

A martingale is a device used to control the carriage of a horse's head. There's a delicious irony in the fact that the artist Martin Gale's parents, racing folk, selected such a resonant name for a boy who went his own way and thwarted plans to guide him towards a conventional career. His father hadn't exactly followed a conventional path himself. He was an English NH jockey who worked with Vincent O'Brien, managed a stud farm and became chief handicapper with the Turf Club. Gale senior was educated at Ampleforth College, near the village of Ampleforth where his grandfather was Master of the Hounds. Gale's mother came from an Irish equestrian background in Galway. She rode work for Sir Cecil Boyd-Rochford, the Queen's trainer, during the Second World War when all the stable lads were serving in the forces. She was also the first female jockey to win a point-to-point in Ireland. The only sign of this regal equine heritage is a mounted fox's head in Gale's studio. A souvenir of his father's association with the Sinnington Hunt. However the artist hasn't strayed far geographically from the racing world. His warm and well-appointed house outside Ballymore Eustace, is just a few miles east of the Curragh. Notwithstanding their horsey proclivities the roots to his current profession can still be traced back to his family. His father, clearly a well-rounded man, was an enthusiastic amateur painter and passed on this interest to his son starting with the oil paints he gave him at the age of six. His mother's family were also painters and from an early age he remembers them all making their own Christmas cards and receiving fulsome praise for their efforts. Also, the family home was bedecked with inherited equine art including work by Snaffles and Lionel Edwards. Charles Lamb was a close friend of his mother's family and over the years they acquired many of his paintings. So there was exposure to a variety of art for the budding artist and encouragement to have a go himself. But art for his family was seen as an accomplishment not a career.

Gale's earliest formal education was a spell of private tuition at Vincent O'Brien's home in Ballydoyle, near Cashel, where his classmates were O'Brien's daughters Elizabeth and Susan. (This connection was to surface again later in life when he sold a painting to Kevin McClory, Elizabeth's husband and master of Straffan House.) He moved on to become a boarder at Newbridge College. There he remembers the positive influence of the Dominican Father Henry Flanagan who he described as "a renaissance man" with a particular interest in art. However, his sojourn in Newbridge ended prematurely when he was expelled in 6th Year after being caught while on a nocturnal adventure. Himself and an accomplice had copied a master key and would regularly head off after hours to the local tennis hops. While both were caught, the accomplice, a key member of the senior rugby team, did not share his fate. An injustice that still rankles.

But this expulsion was destiny shaping his ends. His parents sent him to Dublin to complete his secondary education at a crammer called Blackrock Academy on Upper Mount Street. This school was run by the colourful William Martin and contained a motley collection of students, male and female, whose behaviour had been found wanting in more staid establishments. His route to this new school took him past the College of Art in Kildare Street. Gale remembers being impressed by the bohemian brigade that emerged daily from this location. They seemed "freedom personified" to the closeted boarding-school boy. This planted an ambition: "I wanted to be one of them". His father however had other ideas and secured him a job as a management trainee with the Rank Organisation in Phibsboro. Drawn towards Rank's advertising department and its graphic designers he ascertained that the route to such work also lay in the College of Art. This stiffened his resolve and the aspiring artist, after a year of servitude, escaped to freedom and art school in 1968.

While he enjoyed a couple of years of steady, if conventional, tuition there - his progress was arrested by the series of student protests and strikes that brought chaos to his last two years. Formal tuition was disrupted and the students were forced to look after themselves. Sharp-eyed observers of Reeling in the Years can catch a glimpse of Gale amongst protesting art students at the time - sporting a hair style that only Guggi could envy. Some of the teachers stuck with the students. Gale speaks particularly appreciatively of Charlie Cullen. "Carey Clarke taught me how to draw an eye but Charlie Cullen had empathy".

While still at College, Gale had two works accepted for the 1971 Exhibition of Living Art so the tyro artist began to attract notice. Gerald Davis gave himself and John Devlin a two-man show in 1972 while they were both still at college. He was subsequently recruited by Bruce Arnold, who attended his Graduate show the following year, and this led to his first solo show at the Neptune Gallery in 1974. Following the demise of the Neptune Gallery, Gale was keen to join Taylor Galleries, a favoured destination for aspiring artists. He spotted his opportunity after the opening of the Living Art show in 1980. He was drinking with the various attendees in the Henry Grattan on Baggot Street where he espied John Taylor at the bar. Emboldened by a few pints he approached Taylor - a gallerist notorious for being immune to the entreaties of artists - and declared: "I was thinking of joining your gallery. What do you think?". Taylor, perhaps mellowed by his surroundings, surprisingly agreed: "yes, that seems like a good idea" and he was taken on board. In 1982 he was also selected as one of the original members of Aosdana. The cnuas was a great boost to the artist at the time. While he sold well between 1974 and 1980, the following decade was a grim time for artists. He had a growing family and it was a timely supplement to the meagre income he derived from art and driving the local school bus. These days he can comfortably manage without it. "I haven't drawn it for many years".

Martin Gale's has been called a hyper-realist, a super-realist, and even a surrealist. However he prefers to refer to himself as a realist painter and the painters he admires most such as Andrew Wyeth, Edward Hopper and David Hockney are all realists in their own varied ways. Closer to home he feels an affinity with the work of Colin Harrison, another realist. But Gale is a realist with a difference. He does not paint what he sees before him as a photo-realist such as John Doherty would do. It's realism refined and excluding, omitting the fine detail of photo-realism. It's plainly artifice, reality slightly out of kilter - twilight zone in the midlands. In a recent interview Gale explained his modus operandi. "The paintings are all fictions - this is not a slice of reality. I gather a set of ingredients and put them all together". If you look at Guest from his current exhibition at Taylor Galleries all the differing elements that make up the painting were encountered locally and stored in his memory bank for future use. The planes overhead came from observing the Kildare gliding club's activities, the spreading chestnut tree is about 200 yards from his home and the woman in her blue finery was spotted at a wedding a few months earlier - observing perhaps a match she didn't approve of. These disparate elements all existed as separate images that he had sketched or photographed. After they had marinaded in his imagination for a period he brought them together to create this image of something afoot in a rural setting.

A characteristic Martin Gale painting contains a preoccupied figure, or figures, in a landscape. He believes that "people are always drawn to paintings with other people in them". He still paints landscapes and finds them a good way of easing a creative block. "If you're stuck, paint a landscape - it's keeping with the language". His natural habitat is the mid-lands - the area surrounding his home near Ballymore-Eustace where he has lived for over 30 years. His subject matter is rooted in what he encounters on his daily round. He goes for regular walks with his amiable collies and will usually have a camera or a sketch pad with him. There he captures and stores images of the fields, the woods, and the local characters for possible future use.

It's not surprising that Hopper is one of Gale's favourite artists. They share a penchant for inserting preoccupied figures into their paintings - Gale's outside and rural, Hopper's inside and urban. In both cases there is a feeling you are watching a still from an unfolding drama. "I like", he says, "to provide a hint of a narrative without spelling it out" - leaving space for the imagination. Something has happened or something is about to happen. A more overtly unsettling piece from the current show, Halloween - Out Early, illustrates this. It shows two children walking down a country lane - overshadowed by trees and looming hedgerow. One wears a sinister Venetian mask - adding a touch of weirdness. The headlights of a car approach. It's twilight and something wicked this way comes.

When discussing other artists Gale surprisingly cited the Sligo-based artist Sean McSweeney as "a great influence on me". Their styles could hardly be more different. However, Gale admires him for his "love affair with the landscape" and for demonstrating that artists "don't have to be cool and detached". It's clear that Gale shares this passion for his surroundings and is creating a memorable record of his encounters with it.

Taylor Galleries,

Dublin,

Mon-Fri: 10am-5.30pm

Sat: 11am-3pm

tel: 01 676 6055

John P. O'Sullivan

 

 

 

 

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RUA Annual Exhibition

Nineteen Eighty-four by Neil Shawcross

An edited version of this review appeared in the Sunday Times Culture Magazine on 26 October 2014.

 

Visitors to the Royal Ulster Academy (RUA) annual show from outside Belfast should consider the train. Arriving at Central Station you can stretch your legs by taking a 30-minute walk along a scenic stretch of the Lagan, admiring the doughty oarsmen and women as your proceed. Turn right into the Botanic Gardens and there you'll find the large, spanking new and well-appointed Ulster Museum. The RUA annual show was a moveable feast in terms of location for a number of years but since the Ulster Museum reopened in 2009 it has settled there. There are plans afoot for the RUA to secure a permanent home of its own in a five-story listed building on Ann Street but these will take some years to come to fruition.

Just as the Royal Hibernian Academy's (RHA) annual show gives us a panoramic view of the current state of Irish art, the RUA show provides an overview of what's happening in the North. There are differences in the selection process however. The RUA follow the Royal Academy (RA) model where there's a two stage selection process, rather than the more unwieldy RHA model where there's no preliminary stage. Stage one involves online shortlisting whereby images uploaded by entrants are viewed. About a third of these are shortlisted and then delivered to the Academy for actual viewing. A second selection then takes place and the academy displays around a third of these shortlisted works. There's another major difference with the RHA. The academicians of the RUA confine themselves to two pieces each. (Those over 75 are allowed a third, on the grounds, I suppose, of respect for the venerable.) Their Southern peers at the RHA can take advantage of an entitlement of up to seven pieces. For example at the last RHA show Thomas Ryan and John Behan displayed seven pieces each and others such as Liam Belton and Maeve McCarthy had six. This does tend to unbalance the RHA's annual show and make it less broadly representative than it could be. The Northern show is however smaller in scale, there are 304 works on view compared to 565 at the RHA.

The RUA has existed in one form or another since 1879. It started life modestly as The Belfast Ramblers' Sketching Club. This was the result of an initiative by John Vinycomb, a senior designer at a Belfast printing firm. It started with 16 members of his art department who had been students at the Belfast School of Art. In 1890, with increased membership, it expanded into The Belfast Art Society and in 1930 The Ulster Academy of Arts, with Sir John Lavery elected its first President. Finally, as part of the Festival of Britain in 1951, the Royal prefix was granted by King George VI and it became The Royal Ulster Academy of Arts.

This early link with the Belfast School of Art remains as strong as ever with works by its alumni and graduates making up a high proportion of the show. Southern artists are also well represented. In addition to those who get in through the open submission process, the academy has a policy of inviting a number of Southern artists every year. Those from the south who made it in through one route or another include Amelia Stein, Bernadette Kiely, Francis Matthews (who won the KPMG Young Artist Award), and Tadgh McSweeney. The president of the RUA Colin Davidson has enjoyed the distinction this year of showing at all three academy shows. In addition to paintings at the RUA, and the RHA, his fine portrait of Paul Muldoon was shown at the RA's annual summer show.

Entering the 5th floor gallery, divided into three large rooms, the first thing that catches the eye is Dermot Seymour's Hiberno Hare - a large oil featuring a hare with a bloody wound on its forepaw suspended over a mythic landscape. You may miss the metaphor here but it's a powerful image notwithstanding. Nearby Colin Davidson confounds expectations by supplanting his customary portrait with Cloud - a dreamy and subtle landscape. Photography is very well represented in the show. Notable is a characteristically chilling piece by Paul Seawright which owes much of its impact to its title. In the same room, it's hard not to laugh at Oliver Jeffers Ginger Hitler - as if redheads didn't get enough unjust abuse already. Or maybe that's the point. Leonora Neary's These Rooms Within are two dark, cryptic works that evoke that space where introspection occurs.

Moving into the second room you are engaged immediately by that splash of red that characterises Neil Shawcross. He has two large pieces that dominate the space. There are also two fine luxuriant abstracts by Brian Ferran, one of which garnered him the RUA Perpetual Gold Medal. This room also features Be by Amanda Brooke - a striking hanging sculpture of a flock of birds where the attendant shadows play a prominent role. A couple of the portraits in this room give one pause. If the one of Paul Muldoon set out to be a Dorian Gray version of the poet it certainly succeeded. Nearby the portrait of Andy Irvine seems to have sucked all the strength of character out of that interesting man and left us with a weak-looking musician in a contrived pose. Two photographs by John Roch Simons are amongst the best things on view. These evocative images of an old nun carry haunting suggestions of a life wasted. A couple of quirky portraits also linger in the mind: Sheena Malone's Untitled and Lenka Davidikova's Joker. Francis O'Toole's languorous Dormit, all lush colour and eroticism, would grace any bordello.

The third and furthermost of the three rooms, whether by accident or design, contains some of the weakest work. There are a number of insipid landscapes and a couple of sub-bucolic renditions of domestic animals. There are however some good deeds also in this naughty room. These include Light Reflection and Into the Dark by Sophie Aghajanian and three cool abstract bogscapes by Jean Duncan

In general the sculpture is the least successful part of the show. This is partly due to to unsympathetic way it is displayed. Much of it is laid out cheek to jowl on tables as in a craft shop. Perhaps, given the constraints of the space, it was not possible to display each piece on a separate plinth but the the resultant juxtapositions are often a bit jarring. The highlights include Francis Lambe's Terracotta Sea Bean, Adam May's ceramic Cusp and Kate Mac Donagh's mysterious and elegant Sidhe. Two pieces reward careful scrutiny: Claire Gibson's aptly named Reflections and Karen Gibson's Chernobyl Metryoshka Doll Set - the porcelain dolls depicting scenes that are far from playful.

Print work is well represented. Elizabeth Magill's award winning Venice is impressive and there are two cool and restrained works by Keith Wilson. Sarah Rogers' Return to Hospital and Margaret Arthur's encaustic mono prints Reflective and On Thin Ice also stand out. On the video front those who check out Sizzling Babes may be surprised that the title refers to bacon rather than bathing beauties. They will have to content themselves with watching playful pigs run about oblivious of their date with the frying pan.

Looking back over the Irish art scene for the past hundred years there's an argument to be made that Belfast has been its epicentre. Paul Henry was born there as was Sir John Lavery. In the middle of the 20th century George Campbell, Colin Middleton, Dan O'Neill, and Gerard Dillon all emerged, a couple of them from its meaner streets. A little later Basil Blackshaw appeared - a precocious talent born into a sporting family in nearby Glengormley, This show gives us an opportunity to observe how the sons (and daughters) of Ulster are living up to this illustrious heritage.

Ulster Museum

Belfast

Tue-Sun: 10am-5pm

Tel: 00 44 (0)28 90320819

 

 

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James Hanley - Souvenirs

A slightly edited version of this piece appeared in the Sunday Times Culture magazine on the 30 March 2014

James Hanley is the very model of an establishment painter. A bastion of the RHA, a member of Aosdana and on the board of the National Gallery. He's perhaps best known for his portraits of  figures from official Ireland - prominent politicians, garlanded professors and august old painters. He's the one who immortalised Bertie Aherne in oil - the bland and benign figure he portrayed is an ambiguous legacy. He's also done some fine nude studies over the years. This show sees him move away from his usual concerns to give us a series of paintings based on well-known locations encountered on his travels around the world - the standardised blue-bordered format suggests picture postcards in oil. While these are efficient well-wrought pieces there is an absence of struggle or expression in them - Paddy Graham he ain't, nor would want to be I expect.  An exception to this is his minimalist study of Auschwitz. The lookout towers, the box car, and the shadowy figures moving in the mist capture the essence of that bleak and blighted spot. 

RHA Ashford Gallery

Mon-Sat: 11am-5pm 

Wed: 11am-8pm

Sun: 12pm-5pm

tel: 01 661 2558

John P. O'Sullivan

Rancid Ruminations - June 2013

Photograph from RHA Annual Show 

I do despair of Channel 4.  They have revamped one of their very best programmes, Channel 4 Racing, and in the process destroyed it.  Like the base Indian throwing away a pearl richer than all his tribe.  Did they know not what they had?  Recent surveys have told them that about 90% of people prefer the old formula.  It's not merely the irritating new people:  Claire Balding running around like a head girl on crack, commandeering the mike at every opportunity to bellow out the bleeding obvious; and the deplorably eager Rishi running after her with his tail wagging.  It's more the change in tone.  It's moved from low-key knowing professionalism with a tincture of world-weary cynicism (usually courtesy of John Francome) to a jolly hockey sticks false heartiness, dizzying location changes, and relentless bon homie.  It's lost its soul.  And is it my imagination but hasn't the royal ass licking grown more intense in recent weeks?  With Royal Ascot yet to come, heaven forfend.  It isn't just the amiable old broiler Bess who gets the grovel, that bettle-browed autocrat from Dubai is also smothered in deference.

Don't you grow weary of all this guff about Seanad reform.  Let's be honest and abolish both the Dail and the Seanad.  The Dail does not run the country - it's merely a container for lobbyists with specific local interests.  There is no real debate - no freedom of expression - just kiss the whip. The country is run by 3 or 4 senior ministers and the upper echelons of the public service - with the connivance of the Law Library.  Nothing radical will happen.  Imagine this lot abolishing RTE as Greece has just done with its public broadcaster.  We are even afraid to tackle the obscene salaries of our jaded time-servers.  The abortion debate is a non-issue cranked up following an incident of egregious medical negligence.  It's a distraction merely, a side show. And while we had no problem bringing in special powers to handle the IRA, we lack the will to touch the robber-barons who have plundered our finances.  They laugh at us from the US and other lands of capitalist refuge.

There is a worm at the heart of Tipperary hurling.  They have a young and highly skilful team leavened with a few wise old heads.  They won an All-Ireland a few years ago and looked set fair to win a few more.  But now that seems a freak result.  They caught Kilkenny weakened by injuries and on an off day.  Every time they meet this weakness surfaces.  They lack real appetite for the physical battle. Kilkenny are close to them in skill and organisation - but radically harder and more cynical.  Intestinal fortitude is where they differ.  This dearth showed itself again last Sunday against Limerick.  The Tipp forwards were physically bullied by the Limerick backs.  What to do?  Maybe send a few big lads forward - blend beef and skill up front.

The annual RHA show seemed stronger that usual this year.  Of course there were the usual waxen portraits of worthies from academe (step forward James Hanley) and way too many undistinguished pieces from the RHA members.  However,  there seemed to be a lot of new names, many of them foreign.  Mick O'Dea had some great portraits of fellow painters Charlie Cullen, Mick Cullen and Stephen McKenna.  There were a number of outstanding photographs (see image) and the customary elegant beauty of Eilis O'Connell's work.  My favourite piece was a typically edgy rural landscape by Martin Gale ("Fences").

Portraits of the Artists 4: Basil Blackshaw

Basil Blackshaw - January 2013 (Paddy Benson)

This is my profile of Basil Blackshaw first published in the Sunday Times Culture magazine on the 27th January 2013:


Home is the Hunter

In rural Antrim, a few miles east of Lough Neagh, Basil Blackshaw is resting on his laurels.  His work may have slowed down to a trickle, but the esteem in which he is held continues to grow.  His reputation is set to be further enhanced by the exhibition Blackshaw at 80, currently running at the RHA.  This show features a representative selection of paintings from across his career chosen by the artist himself and Dr. Riann Coulter, curator of the F. E. McWilliam gallery in Banbridge.  In March it will move on to the Gordon Gallery in Derry as part of the UK City of Culture programme.

Blackshaw lives with his personable partner Helen Faloon in a warm and well-maintained old farmhouse off a side road near Antrim town.  His once thriving community of dogs is reduced to one, an elderly and affectionate Staffordshire Bull Terrier called Jet.  He enjoys a leisurely pipe after indulging his sweet tooth with a slice of rich coffee cake as he mulls over his memories.  He is reserved but friendly, smiling a lot and frequently bursting into laughter when recounting some amusing anecdote from his past.  Memories of the late Tom Caldwell and Markey Robinson were a particular source of humour for him. With some prompting from Helen he told a scabrous story about Markey that illustrated that artist's infamous capacity for foul language.  His response to any probing questions about his art is equivocal and often downright contradictory. In an interview with Brian McAvera in 2002 he maintained that Franz Marc had an influence on his horse paintings.  And you can surely see a connection in their use of colour.  However Marc's work seems much more controlled and not at all like Blackshaw's looser more painterly style.  When I brought it up he laughed and said there was no connection whatsoever.  Take your pick.

He is coy about influences generally but a tour of the current show will give a flavour of these.  There's his tribute to Cezanne in Cezanne's Gardener, his window paintings nod towards Rothko, his strings of horses at exercise suggest Degas, and you often see hints of Charlie Brady, especially in Studio.  Blackshaw is a master draughtsman and most of his work, especially his horse and dog paintings, are realistic depictions of these creatures.  One piece, Big Brown Dog, certainly isn't.  It's more heraldic than realistic, as Brian Fallon noted in his excellent 2012 essay.  He wasn't forthcoming when I queried this anomaly.  He's not keen on interpretation, preferring to emphasise the primary visual encounter.  One particular work, Anna on a Sofa, begs for analysis.  It features his erstwhile wife, Anna Ritchie sitting, arms folded tightly, jammed up to one side of an otherwise empty striped sofa. Again Blackshaw doesn't rise to bait - just smiling gnomically when I brought it up.  Their marriage break up was a difficult time for him.

Blackshaw may seem an amiable and easy-going character but he gets much exercised by the public airing of any work he deems inferior and he took a keen interest in the selection  for the show.  He also expressed himself as displeased that a substantial biography published a few years back by Eamonn Mallie contained pictures of work with which he had become dissatisfied.  His partner Helen chided him good-naturedly saying that it was his own fault as he was asked for his input but only took an interest when it was too late.

He's much more forthcoming on the subjects of dogs and horses.  He regrets not having more dogs these days but as he walks with the aid of a stick he cannot exercise them as before.  He trained greyhounds for about 12 years and had much success not just at local tracks but in  big races at Shelbourne Park and Harolds Cross.  He was unlucky not to win the Oaks on one occasion and spoke fondly of those days:  "Dateline was the best dog we ever had" he recalled, "she won bitch of the year that year".   Before he began to sell his art, dogs were his main source of income.  Unlike his fellow artists Bacon and Freud, Blackshaw didn't gamble.  He is too much the shrewd country boy for that foolishness I suspect.  His real affection for these creatures can be seen in the delightful A Dog and Two Men (see illustration).  Here two men chat while the dog sits close to one (Blackshaw himself) and gazes up at him adoringly.


Blackshaw's life has not just been a rural idyll surrounded by God's creatures.  It has been described by Brian Fallon as "an epic of survival".  He has fought and survived alcoholism, a painful separation, and a major studio fire (in 1985). The fire destroyed a large number of paintings and drawings (including a cherished horse painting by his father) and knocked the stuffing out of him for a period.  He particularly regretted the loss of four easels.  The fire did give him the opportunity to build a new studio without a view.  The absence of windows in this new studio, all light coming from skylights, meant he didn't get distracted by the scenery around him as before.  A further stimulus to get on with it came in the form of the model Jude Stephens. She was his muse for a whole series of nude studies which took him away from his landscapes and animals.  Her essay in Basil Blackshaw - Painter by Brian Ferran (published in 1995) is a charming evocation of an unworldly man.

Many artists move to the country and pursue their careers from idyllic locales,
with romantic views of the Atlantic perhaps, or amid the rugged grandeur of West Cork. There they live within their creative bubbles - occasionally emerging to astonish the city with their visions. Blackshaw is different - he is of the countryside as well as being in it. His horses, dogs and fighting cocks are not mere objects selected for our visual delectation.  They are the creatures of his daily round. The colourful fighting cocks were an enthusiasm for many years.  He trained them for their bloody battle and still speaks proudly of his success in this arena.  His landscapes are inspired by Dromora and the areas around his home where he enjoyed hunting and point-to-points.  In his time he has been better known to many of his neighbours as a trainer of dogs or a breeder of horses than as an artist. The practical horny-handed farmers of South Antrim would have little time in any case for a pursuit they would have deemed effete and worse, unprofitable.  Jude Stevens' essay tells a wonderful story of a trip to the "meat man" for dog food with Blackshaw. The trip culminated in a shack behind a ramshackle cottage which was was straight out  the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.  The floor was carpeted with congealed blood, swarms of blue bottles buzzed around her head, and in the gloom she could see carcasses of dead cattle in varying stages of dismemberment.  Blackshaw was quite at home there, chatting to the bloodied butcher, and they departed with a package of "warm meat".


Considering what a horsey country we are it's amazing that so few artists seem drawn to the subject.  True there are a few specialists, such as Peter Curling, but in terms of major figures it's hard to think of anyone other than Jack Yeats. He shares with Blackshaw a feel for the world of racing particularly.  In the current show we get horses in a variety of guises: coming a cropper in a steeplechase, exercising in strings, surreal in purple or red, or, as in Night Rider, conveying an sinister cowboy.  One giant piece,The Fall, is a virtuoso performance.  This charcoal and oil work shows a crashing fall, the horse  landing on its head as the jockey flies through the air, hands braced for impact.  The energy of the calamitous moment perfectly preserved.  You also marvel at the use of charcoal in a picture of such scale.

You can't help but feel that Blackshaw prefers animals to people.  He has famously declared that "portrait painting is a nuisance".  Looking at his portrait of Arthur Gibney in the show you can see dead hand of a commission rather than heartfelt engagement.  Many of his portraits however are alive and engaging. Two that stood out were a thoughtful Brian Friel and a warm and vivacious Mary McGrath.


Blackshaw was a precocious talent.  He was doing commissions in his teens and was accepted for art college at the age of 16.  There he enjoyed the benign influence of the wonderfully named Romeo Toogood.  He thrived there and his career took off when he had a piece acquired by the Ulster Museum when he was 20.  He was also taken up early by Tom Caldwell, an astute judge of talent and an energetic dealer.



The sturm and drang of his boozing days with the likes of Dan O'Neill and Paddy Collins are but fond memories.  Helen tells stories of rescuing Blackshaw and O'Neill from Belfast during the troubles and running the gauntlet of army road blocks with the two drunken and garrulous artists.  He has long foresworn the drink.  Himself and Helen are plainly happy and at peace in their comfortable rural retreat.  Their walls are bedecked with an eclectic collection of paintings:  amidst his own pieces are works by friends past and present, such as Charlie Brady and Neil Shawcross.  There's also a  wonderful drawing of a boar by Elizabeth Frink.  One suspects Blackshaw will do little more painting. When I enquired about looking at his studio Helen said the heating was broken and that it was a bit dismal. A cursory look confirmed this.  He has no immediate plans to set foot in it.  Maybe spring will bring some inspiration, or his old friend Jude will call around and stir him into action.   But a man who has painted for nearly 70 years is surely entitled to take life easy.  His legacy is safe.