Paul Muldoon at Liberty Hall

Paul Muldoon arrives in our midst festooned with titles and awards - Pulizer Prize winner, Professor of Poetry at Princeton, and Poetry editor on the New Yorker amongst tthem. He's the nearest poetry has to a rock star so I was was a little surprised that the venue was only half full. I'm not sure the event was well publicised - a number of people I spoke to subsequently were pissed off that they hadn't heard it was on. He was introduced by the General Secretary of the INTO - confirming perhaps that notion that poetry was something you did at school. He's not looking very well - a bit pale and dishevelled and although he's dressed in black there's no hiding that substantial paunch. His greying hair has lost that Phil Spector look and is now just artily tousled. He apologises for his regular sniffling which he attributes to a rapeseed allergy.

He's a practised and proficient performer - starting with the old lecturer's touch of taking off his watch and laying it on the podium so he can discreetly monitor the time. He's at home on the stage and moves around easily, interjecting little quips both between and even within the poems. At one stage he comments that a particular poem "goes on a bit". He speaks slowly in a mellifluous Northern accent and pauses regularly for dramatic effect. His poetry is witty, worldly and intelligent. He likes repetition, no surprise in someone who dabbles in rock music. I particularly enjoyed The Old Country, Muldoon's catechism of cliches:

Every slope was a slippery slope

where every shave was a very close shave

and money was money for old rope

where every grave was a watery grave

His latest collection (One Thousand Things Worth Knowing) contains a fine tribute to Seamus Heaney - Cuthbert and the Otters - but he chose to omit that and gave us Cuba (2) from the same book ("I'm hanging with my daughter") which seems to me a strained and inferior poem. But that's a mere quibble. All in all it was an entertaining performance from a polished and urbane poet.

He gives us a bare hour and is definitely not up for an encore. There's books to be signed. His signature is a minimal scrawl and he doesn't really engage with anyone - moving the queue along briskly. I ask him why his eyes are closed in his recent RA portrait painted by Colin Davidson - very unusual for Colin's work which tend to focus on the eyes. He pauses slightly and then replies that "you'll have to ask Colin". The line must keep moving I suppose. These signings are ghastly affairs with eager punters colliding with jaded writers and I feel sorry for all concerned. Nonetheless the impression I got was of a professional operator, conscious of his status, going through the dutiful motions. Or he could of course just be badly jet-lagged and we got him on an off day. Whatever - the poetry forgives all.

 

 

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TB Blues - The Foynes Year

A slightly edited version of this tragic saga appeared in the Sunday Times Speakeasy seection on the 17 May 2015.

When I was around seven I started fainting a lot. It would often happen in school – without warning. I remember once crumbling to the ground from the steps at choir practise. Doctors were called and tests ensued and I seemed to be in bed a lot. Then out of the blue, without discussion, or much ceremony I was whisked off to sanatorium in Foynes – about a hundred miles away. There I was to stay for a year on my own without a single visit from my mother and one brief one from my father. Apparently I had been struck down with the socially dubious and highly infecctious TB. The lack of visits being due not to parental indifference, but rather to the danger of catching it from me and wiping out the entire family. Neither of my parents ever referred to my condition as TB – if my mother referred to it at all it was always that "he had a spot on his lung".

I had a lot of grapes when I arrived in Foynes and I remember thinking initially how friendly the nurses seemed to be – sitting chatting at the end of my bed and steadily working their way through my precious fruit. One was a statuesque brunette (Nurse Burke) who had achieved some local fame by going out with Tony O’Reilly – then a young rugby hero. Thereafter I saw very little of these friendly nurses apart from the brisk commerce of the daily round.

The wards were enormous barn-like rooms with high-ceilings and huge windows all along one side. These windows were kept open through all the seasons – no doubt the sea air was seen as beneficial to our poor tortured lungs. There were about twenty beds in these wards occupied by boys ranging from three to sixteen. The biggest problem was boredom. There was great commerce in comics and for a while I was able to trade my regular consignment of 64 page cowboy comics that were in vogue at the time. We were all sports mad and I can remember listening to boxing matches on concealed radios long after lights out.

I never felt particularly ill and so was tempted out of bed regularly. We would bundle up a newspaper and play improvised rugby up and down the ward. The nurses were unimpressed with these antics and if you were caught the punishment was to confiscate your pyjama bottoms – a particularly cruel deprivation for a pre-adolescent boy. And a surefire way to keep him in bed. The embarrassment of having your bed made as you squirmed to cover yourself was meant to give you pause the next time you planned a rugby adventure. You usually got your pants back the next day. However I was a recidivist and spent more time without than with my nether garments. It became so much of a problem that the ward sister decided to escalate and I was condemned to spend a week in the baby’s ward. This was a special hell involving the public humiliation of being the only non-baby in the ward and the constant sleep deprivation of trying to sleep in a ward full of screaming babies.

When Christmas came there was no visitation from my family but instead the Red Cross came around and we all got substantial presents. I was given a large sub-machine gun with a handle on the side that you cranked to make a convincing noise. I had great fun running around all day shooting my fellow-patients. The pants law was revoked for the day. However, on Stephen’s Day all the toys were collected and stored away – and despite numerous requests we never saw them again. I still miss that gun. I was devastated for weeks afterwards.

After a year or so, for no apparent reason, my father arrived at the hospital and I was taken home. The whole thing was mysterious to me. I never felt sick and therefore was much aggrieved to be stuck in hospital. I felt no different on the day I was admitted to the day I came out. Perhaps the sea air had healed my damaged lungs. When I returned home it was never spoken of. I resumed school and soon began to take part in all the sporting activities normal to a boy of that age. The fainting had stopped.

 

 

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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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A Potential False Economy

I have a problem. I take my dogs walking every day and often bring my hurley and a tennis ball with me. Some days I travel without these accoutrements but invariably Shyla, my short arsed retriever, finds a ball or even two. I often spot one myself - especially up Killiney Hill where hundreds of ball chasing dogs disport themselves. If I see a ball on the road leading up to Killiney Hill I will stop the car and get out an retrieve it. By these various strategems I have amassed a collection of nearly a hundred tennis balls. But I can't stop. I'm always on the look out for more. I got two extra ones today. Shyla found one and as I was leaving the Killiney Hill car park I saw another and got out of the car and fetched it. I had my iPhone in my hand and rested it on top of the car as I went over to the ball. I got back in and drove away. Back home I went to make a phone call and with an awful flash of lucid recollection I remembered laying it on the roof the car. Your blood actually does run cold in these situations. I jumped into the car and sped off in the direction of Killiney Hill - more in desperate hope than with any great optimism. There's so much traffic around there on a fine morning that if it hadn't been pinched then it had surely been crushed. But miraculously I was delivered from either of these evils. At the end of our cul-de-sac I spotted a dark object in the middle of the road. There it was - it must have fallen from the roof when I turned left off the main road. It was in perfect condition - thanks to its protective case.

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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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