Makiko Nakamura - Journeys

This review first appeared in the Sunday Times Culture magazine on the 11 October 2015.

Makiko Nakamura is a Japanese artist who moved to Dublin in 1999 to commune with the shade of Samuel Beckett. She returned to her native Kyoto last year. Her early work here inclined towards the cryptic with greys and blacks predominant. Her exemplar's influence could be seen both in the rigorous minimalism of these virtually monochromatic paintings and in their finely-honed finish. Her current show featuring 39 new works hasn't entirely abandoned this early tendency. The large painting North Temple is almost uniformly black apart from the shadow of a grid beneath the surface. It's an imposing piece imbued with a dark serenity that suggests Rothko. There are still quite a few of these moody meditations in the show but they are leavened by others that demonstrate a lighter and brighter palette. Yellows and blues abound and Les Ailes Rouges is a luxuriant red. Also, her characteristic underlying grid has been replaced in many cases by circles - producing softer cells. Her technique involves the application of layer upon layer of paint, constantly erasing and reworking so that the completed work shows traces of the stages in its creation. These are painterly palimpsests for our mediative contemplation.

Taylor Galleries

Dublin

John P. O'Sullivan

 

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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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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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In Search of Camille Souter

Camille Souter Beside a Sculpture by her Son Tim Morris

A slightly edited version of this piece appeared in the Sunday Times Culture magazine on the 24 August 2014


Camille Souter seems a mysterious almost mythical figure in Irish art. This impression is reinforced by a visit to the exhibition Irish Women Artists 1870-1970. There she is on display amongst long dead figures such as Evie Hone and Letitia Hamilton. Garrett Cormican, in his illuminating biography Camille Souter: Mirror in the Sea, described her as "a fish: restless, elusive, and hard to catch." That may sound a little unflattering but she plainly concurs as one of her best-known works is entitled "Self-portrait as a Cod's Head". Apart from her annual trip to Aosdána (she was elected as Saoi in 2008) she is rarely to be seen at art events and casual callers are not encouraged at her Dooagh retreat. A sign outside her studio says "Working - Private". Most visual artists, starved of recognition, welcome the attention of the media, but not Souter. She made it clear that she didn't want a photographer present and that a look around her studio is not an option. Her first comment on my arrival at her white-washed cottage was "I'm all grumpy".

This however turned out to be far from the case. Warmed up by a couple of glasses of The Famous Grouse (her favourite tipple), and smoking her rollups, she was amiable and talkative - happy, it seemed, to discuss her long and fascinating life. Although the very model of the bohemian artist, her English origins and her middle-class background still linger in what used to be called an ascendancy accent. Around her neck she sported two large silver ornaments: a fish and an aeroplane, both life-long interests. It was a surprise to see her without her distinctive crotched beret. Her daughter had cut her hair recently, she explained. "I feel sort of naked without it". She initially used it to keep her long hair out of her face while she was painting and then it became a habit. The local fishermen favoured them when she came to Achill first and she decided to crochet one for herself. When one wears out she simply crotchets another.

At the age of 84 she is still an active and resourceful woman, and shows no signs of flagging. She has given up flying (she learned while on a residency at Shannon in the early 80s) because it's too expensive and because the advanced automation these days makes it less fun. She still drives her venerable white van however. It's emblazoned with a quote from Joseph Campbell that could never be applied to its admirably industrious owner:

The Silence of unlaboured fields

Lies like a judgement on the air

Her vegetable garden is well tended and we enjoy a cucumber from it in the cheese sandwich she prepares. In her living room lies an open copy of Simon Schama's The Story of the Jews. She's much engaged by the situation in Gaza, and in the Middle-East generally, and decided she needed to do some background reading.

For someone who's had an artistic career of nearly sixty years, it's downright peculiar that she's had so few solo shows. She's had only three in all and two of those were in Dublin restaurants in the Fifties. Her last commercial solo show was in the Dawson Gallery in 1977. There have been a few retrospectives and plenty of group shows but generally she has sold her work piecemeal. The reason for this is very simple she explains. She had to do so to survive. She is proud of the fact that she brought up five children solely on her painting. "Very few artists have reared their family on their work alone". Her exacting quality control may also be a factor in this dearth of shows.

Souter's earliest break through was at the Irish Exhibition of Living Art in 1957. She had four works on show all of which sold. Sir Basil Goulding was a significant figure in the development of her career. His early faith in her work was influential in building her reputation and in enabling her to make a living. "He was a lovely man" she recalled with feeling when his name is mentioned. She remembered his first visit to her studio in the gate lodge of Charleville House in Enniskerry in the early Sixties. He "humbly" scrutinised the work and ended up buying "quite a few" pieces. As he was writing the cheque she was so broke that she asked "do you think I could have ten shillings of it in money". Those early works all went for a guinea - she was initially going to charge a pound but decided to squeeze the extra shilling out of it. Goulding continued to buy her work throughout his life and also introduced her to other collectors such as Gordon Lambert. More significantly he ensured through his art world connections that her work was bought by institutions such as the Hugh Lane Gallery and later by the Arts Council and Trinity. Michael Scott, the architect, was another early patron who introduced her work to a wide circle of his influential friends.

Souter was born plain Betty Holmes in Northampton in 1929. Her father came to Dublin in 1932 and she went to school in Glengara Park (subsequently subsumed into what's now Rathdown School). Although no scholar ("I was a ding dong" she observed quaintly) she found someone there who recognised where her talents lay. "I'm so thankful we had Miss Garrett who taught art". She went to London after school to study nursing at Guy's Hospital. "From the age of nine or ten I wanted to save the world". Her studies were interrupted when she contracted TB and she spent nearly a year in a sanatorium. There she read voraciously, especially the Russians. After qualifying she gave up nursing, took up painting and plunged into the raffish world of Fifties Soho. She never went to college but learned her art from days spent in the National Gallery and from mixing with other artists. Perhaps some of the magic of Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud rubbed off on her in places like the French House and the Colony Club. She met and married, briefly, the actor Gordon Souter. They had a daughter together and he was responsible for changing her first name - suggesting that she adopt the name of the tubercular heroine of Dumas fils' La Dame aux Camelias. After leaving Gordon Souter she went off to Italy with the artist Ralph Rumney, later to marry Peggy Guggenheim's ill-fated daughter Pegeen. He proved fickle. "He was quite ruthless" she recalled, "he had to have money". Rumney flitted off elsewhere but her Italian adventure yielded her first sales and she returned to Ireland and threw herself into the local art scene.

She had her first solo show at El Habano restaurant on Grafton Street in 1956. She also met the sculptor Frank Morris who she was later to marry. The period she spent with him in Calary, County Wicklow, she describes as the happiest of her life - and many of her finest paintings come from that period. She had four more children with Morris but their idyll was shattered by his tragic early death at 40 from septicaemia following an operation for appendicitis. Her garden in Achill contains a poignant reminder of this neglected artist's talent.

She lived on in Wicklow for another 16 years years but the combination of his lingering memory and the depredations of a newly arrived farmer on adjacent land persuaded her to leave eventually. She relocated to Dooagh on Achill Island in 1986. Achill looms large in her biography. She initially went there on holiday with her parents and had lived there for a brief period in the late Fifties before moving to Enniskerry with Morris. She moved back there, built a new studio, and has lived there ever since. It's interesting to see how many Irish women artists lived on Achill from the Irish Women Artists show. In addition to Souter, they include Evie Hone, Mainie Jellet, Letitia Hamilton, and Barbara Warren.

Souter talked very little about her own work and wasn't too responsive to questions about it. Her paintings, to use Brian Fallon's wonderful phrase, are about: "evanescence and the essential fragility and temporality of things". She steers clear of anything grandiose and chooses ordinary subjects such as flowers, fish, and unspectacular landscapes. The human figure appears only occasionally (in her boxing and circus pictures), although there is one striking painting of a pregnant woman. There was an early flirtation with Paul Klee, and a more prolonged period where she was influenced by abstract expressionism, before she settled into her mature style. Some of her very best paintings are landscapes from her two most permanent homes: Calary and Achill. She only paints in natural light and is adamant that her work is best viewed in that light also. She was critical of the RHA's artificial lighting of her work at her retrospective in 2001, she claimed that the Niland in Sligo was a more suitable venue. She doesn't use photographs or sketch pads when she's planning a work but does take notes and adds the odd "squiggle". She is fastidious about the quality of her work and famously borrowed back from Basil Goulding a painting she was dissatisfied with and then destroyed it.

She lives alone these days. Her five children have produced ten grandchildren and three great grand-children and she likes to spend time with them during the summer months. However now that they have departed she is eager to get painting again. She's hoping an impending visit to Portland Bill with the Irish Geological Association will provide some inspiration. Then it's back to the studio. "By the second week of September if anyone comes near me I'll eat them." You have been warned.

John P.O'Sullivan

August 2014

 

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Opening Address at Taylor Galleries Exhibition in Blue House Gallery Schull

Dawson Gallery and Taylor Galleries

For those here who may be unfamiliar with the Dublin art scene, Taylor Galleries had an interesting genesis. You could argue that it started life as far back as 1944 when Leo Smith founded the Dawson Gallery on Dawson Street. Over time, especially as post-war austerity ended, it became the only game in town for the upper echelons of Irish artists, especially in the 60s and 70s. There was some opposition from the David Hendriks gallery but Leo was the king, and the kingmaker. To get a gig with the Dawson Gallery was the ultimate imprimatur - you had arrived, you were a made man, or woman. John Taylor was his young fresh-faced assistant, and in the latter period of the Dawson Gallery's life, Pat began to get involved also. Leo Smith was a bon vivant with a heart condition and while returning home from the funeral of Hilary Heron in Pat Scott's car, he had a heart attack and died. Smith was a confirmed bachelor and had no family to take up the business. After a very brief hiatus, the Dawson's stable of artists, rousted up by Pat Scott, threw their lot in with John and Pat and in 1978 Taylor Galleries was born - in 6 Dawson Street. In 1990 Taylor Galleries relocated to smaller premises at 34 Kildare Street before moving up the road to the current space at 16 Kildare Street in 1996.

Blue-chip Artists

The gallery's artists at the time of Smith's death included such blue-chip names Louis le Brocquy, Tony O'Malley, Bill Crozier, Sean McSweeney, Pat Scott, Michael Farrell, Camille Souter, Sean McSweeney, and Charlie Brady. Their reputations and sales were growing. This was a mighty fine legacy for a young gallerist. Many of these artists are now dead, but the Taylors didn't just sit on their laurels - they took care of the future by bringing in the next generation of artists such as Charles Tyrrell, Martin Gale, John Shinnors, Mary Lohan, and of course John Doherty from this parish.

Amongst Dublin galleries Taylor Galleries stand for quality, a certain professionalism and an adherence to the traditional values of drawing and painting. They are certainly not afraid of abstraction as Charles Tyrrell's work will attest, and they regularly experiment with younger artists but they have a good nose for bullshit. The Kerlin may give you a scantily clad woman drawing shamrocks in green paint with her arse and a catalogue to explain what you're seeing but the Taylors can be relied upon to give you something that can be appreciated without the attendant essay. I have dealt with them as a buyer, a seller and an occasional reviewer and I have always found them to be decent skins. I remember many years ago I put together a group show, not unlike this one, at a gallery I owned in Enniskerry. I had sourced most of the work directly from the artists but was shy a couple of Sean McSweeney's to round off the show. Sean, whom I know well, had nothing available so I went along to John and asked him did he have anything in stock. He took me up to a storeroom on the top floor of the gallery - chock full of goodies - pointed to a half dozen SM's and said "help yourself". Nice guy. Another time I had bought a John Shinnors piece from a photograph (don't do that by the way) and I was very unhappy with the framing and scale of the piece and wanted to return it. It was taken back without demur and my money refunded (don't do that either).

Jim O'Driscoll

On the way here from my sister's house on Barry's Road I passed that beautifully located cemetery overlooking the harbour. It occurred to me how Jim O'Driscoll resting in there would have enjoyed this occasion and this gallery. While he lived a lot of the year in Dublin, he had a house in Rossbrin where he spent the summer resting from his legal labours. I would frequently encounter him mooching around Schull at a loose end - separated from his beloved galleries. For the rest of the year if you wanted to meet Jim, Taylor Galleries on a Saturday morning was a reliable bet. He would spend hours in there chatting with Pat and John about the state of the art world. He had a particular affinity for the Taylor's stable of artists and if you visited his house on Orwell Road you would encounter work by Louis le Brocquy, Tony O'Malley (especially) Bill Crozier, Pat Scott, Charlie Brady and many more. Jim was an insatiable buyer of art and would probably have single-handedly kept this gallery financially viable.

Me and Schull

I have been coming to Schull for more than 25 years, and I have been spending time in Taylor Galleries for nearer thirty. So I am delighted with this marriage between two of my favourite places. The advent of the Blue House gallery has certainly enhanced the cultural life of Schull. I know that John, Brian, Alyn, Keith and John have put huge time and energy into the enterprise. It makes a stroll down the Main Street that much more interesting, and Schull a more attractive venue for holidaying. It has also taken advantage of the standing army of artists in this region to ensure that we don't have to travel to Dublin to or Cork to enjoy their work. Many of the Taylor artists have Cork connections - John of course, Charlie and Tim in Allihies. And of course Pat Scott, who helped broker the Taylor take over of the Dawson Gallery was born up the road in Kilbrittain.

With the right support from you the Blue House Gallery can be a permanent feature of the Schull landscape. So roust up all your promenading barrister friends, your drinking doctors, your holidaying fat cats and the gilded remittance men that throng the streets in July and August and get them in here buying art.

Walking into this show is for me like walking into a party and finding it full of old friends - tried and tested over time. There's Micheal, there's Mary, there's Tony. I hope you enjoy their company as much as I have done.

 

John P. O'Sullivan

18th July 2014

 

 

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Charles Tyrrell - A Dance Within a Structure

Charles Tyrrell in His Allihies Studio

A slightly edited version of this piece appeared in the Sunday Times Culture magazine on the 13 April 2014

"I like to think of Charlie Tyrrell manning the fort in wild Allihies." William Crozier

Perched high on Cod's Head, a couple of hard miles north of Allihies on the Beara Peninsula, is the house and studio of the artist Charles Tyrrell. While hardly a household name, Tyrrell is considered by many critics, and tellingly by many of his fellow painters, to be our greatest living artist. It's a delicious irony that such a rigorously abstract painter lives in one of the most scenic locations in the entire country. Like Ulysses strapped to the mast, Tyrrell has designed his studio so that light enters only through two large north-facing roof windows. He won't be seduced by the siren calls of the stunning scenery that surrounds him. While he enjoys the view, his art is aiming for something deeper than the merely scenic: "the slow forces of nature interest me", those tectonic shifts at work beneath the painted veil of appearance.

Born in Trim, County Meath in 1950, Tyrrell studied at NCAD from 1969 to 1974. This was a period of student unrest and artistic ferment. Tyrrell reacted against the stale figurative tradition that still lingered and went his own abstract way, much influenced initially by minimalist Morris Louis and more lingeringly by the abstract expressionists Mark Rothko and William de Kooning. While working in the US during the summer he saw a lot of their work in the flesh. The chutzpah of these new movements liberated him from the conservatism back home and the examples of Pollock's dripping and Louis's pouring techniques freed him from the easel. "I jumped across the Atlantic in my thinking". He met with some resistance for his stance at NCAD but when it came to his final assessment he was lucky enough to find that his external examiners were William Scott and Patrick Scott - both pioneers of abstraction in this country. The distinction he achieved, he feels, may not have happened otherwise.

That his talent was acknowledged early is indicated by his acceptance into the prestigious Living Art Exhibition in 1972, while still a student. This early recognition was confirmed when he was offered his first solo show in the Project Arts Centre in 1974. The show was opened by the Dublin-based American artist Charlie Brady and his subsequent friendship with Brady introduced the fledgling artist into the contemporary art scene. Gerald Dillon visited the show and soon Tyrrell was joining him and Arthur Armstrong for drinking sessions in Ranelagh. He speaks very warmly of Gerry (as he calls Dillon) and he visited him in hospital a number of times during his final illness. He recalls getting ten shillings from him and he inherited Dillon's hand stitched hat - a keepsake that he clearly values.

Another important visitor to his first Project show was Dorothy Walker - the dominant voice in Irish art discourse at a time and a woman with powerful institutional connections. Walker began to champion his work and it became de rigeur to have a Tyrrell in your collection. He moved into a studio in Mountjoy Square (care-taking a draughty old Georgian Building) and got a part-time job in Dun Laoghaire College of Art. He was taken on by Taylor Galleries in the late 70s - further confirmation that he had arrived.

The Eighties brought great changes in his life. He married Sandy, a student of his in Dun Laoghaire, in 1980. The following year he was selected as one of the founding members of Aosdána. His first child was born and the bohemian life in Mountjoy Square no longer seemed the ideal. The artist Danny Osborne (best known for the Wilde statue in Merrion Square) invited him to visit his Allihies home a few times and during one of the visits Tyrrell came upon the ruin of a stone cottage on Cod's Head. Encouraged by the income provided by the Aosdána Cnuas he decided that West Cork was a better place to raise a family than a decrepit house on Mountjoy Square. The ultimate decision was mainly "to do with finance". In 1984 he made the elemental move and has been there ever since. Looking back he feels it was the right decision: "it set me adrift, it was probably a good thing".

Don't ask Tyrrell to explain his painting. He's as doctrinaire as Lucian Freud in this area. "I don't claim to have any deep philosophical notions". He sees the images as distinct entities in themselves rather then representing some theme or statement. "I don't think art should be a primal scream." As William Crozier said of him: "There is no arcane reference, no symbolism, no bravado, no schmalz, no overt display of emotion." He strongly asserts the primacy of the individual's encounter with the work and will do nothing to encroach on this. "I want a certain ambiguity there which allows the user room to manoeuvre and make a connection which is meaningful for himself. The painting really only starts when somebody else approaches it."

At a public discussion in the RHA a couple of years ago Tyrrell coined the perfect oxymoron, telling us he had "a passion for grey" - influenced by "the grey of West Cork in November" (not to mention perhaps the mass of grey rock on which his studio is situated). He is adamant however that he is not a landscape painter. He "leaves the door open to landscape" but he doesn't welcome it in. Looking back at his earlier Borderland paintings he felt that maybe they "engaged a little bit more actively with the landscape". He saw this as a danger and despite their commercial success decided: "I quickly had to get out of it". The nearest you are going to get to an admission of anything personal in his work is his concession that his birthplace may have provided inspiration. "The use of definite edges, divisions and boundaries became a constant in my visual language over the years. Trim Castle and its keep is a form well etched in my image bank. Its footprint is a square with square wings." So perched on the edge of Europe, manning the fort at wild Allihies, he is nourished by childhood intimations of another fortress.

His current show at Taylor Galleries consists of 30 works on aluminium - mostly around 50 cms square. These seem to be looser and more painterly than much of his work over the past 20 years. They were painted in a "ludicrously" short period of time. "I have never done anything as intense as this". The grids are again in evidence, and grey predominates, accompanied by the familiar black rectangles, but the curved lines and unexpected splashes of colour, while hardly suggesting gay abandon, do seem more playful. Also faint ghostly traces of colour wiped away linger on the ground aluminium. The artist sees this work as "more giving and less austere" than much of his earlier painting. He also speaks of the importance of "absolute finish", getting it right. You can see this is his perfectly honed images. Take a painting off the wall and look at the back of it and you will find that the finish there is equally immaculate.

Tyrrell has always allowed the element of happy accident play a part in his painting. Like Bacon he hopes "chance will work in his favour". He starts out with a minimalist foundation such as a grid and is happy to follow the twists and turns of his encounter with the paint . He refers to his painting as "a dance within a structure". He rarely uses brushes. He just "ploughs on the paint" and then scrapes it off with Japanese spatulas. Splashing, scraping, and wiping he uncovers his images. His aim is for the image to "come together in a coherent and powerful way'. If it doesn't work out he wipes it off and starts again.

Tyrrell is 64 this year. It is 40 years since his first solo show at the Project and this robust character shows no signs of slowing down. He is eager to get back into the studio to keep the momentum going after his latest intensive creative spell. He lives alone these days but is no anchorite. He likes a pint, is warmly embedded in the local community, and enjoys his occasional trips to Dublin. He sings the praises of his local Internet providers who give him access to his dispersed family and the wider world. Tyrrell is a friendly and humorous conversationalist and talks about his work in a trenchant way that is devoid of soulful preciousness. You do sense however, beneath the amiable exterior, an iron resolve and dedication to his art. He feels the responsibility of being part of a continuum stretching back to his beloved Titian and beyond. He is currently reading The Sea by John Banville. He made the revealing comment that "there was too much Banville in the work". His quest has a loftier goal. Steering carefully between the Scylla of landscape and the Charybdis of emotion he aspires to achieve intense and timeless images that transcend their creator. Go and see.

John P. O'Sullivan

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