Lucinda O'Sullivan's Ireland

Thursday 24 February 2011

One of the good things that came about during the Celtic Tiger years was a great increase in art across the spectrum. Galleries boomed. Everybody wanted art on their walls be it massive paintings or massive prints. In essence whether or not it was original art or reproduction, it was good, as it brought alive in people an awareness and interest, which in many cases saw them progress from their first print to their first piece of sculpture or an original painting. People became aware of bespoke furniture and crafts, to appreciating the hours of work, love and design, put in by craftspeople, the silk like soft sensual touch of beautifully crafted wood, or the fineness of individual piece of jewellery, the amazing imaginative and evocative piece of sculpture.

Gerard Byrne is one such artist whose work literally hopped off the Gallery walls all over the country throughout all of those years. I have always been an admirer of Byrne’s work and indeed was at the launch of his first exhibition in the then Harrison Gallery on the corner of George’s and Stephen’s Streets, which was opened by my late colleague Terry Keane.

Byrne, however, like many another artist or thespian before him, was an ‘overnight success’ having put in many years of hard slog and effort perfecting his skill. A self-taught artist he was born in Finglas in 1958, one of six children, where Gerard attended the local Christian Brothers School. He wasn’t very happy there as he didn’t get on with one of the teachers. “He used to beat me a bit, I got hammered a few times, so I was taken out of the school and put into town. I would have preferred to stay in that school with my friends but I had stopped learning because of this teacher.” He was sent into City Quay School, which “was a bit rough but it had a sort of holistic approach and was a very caring school. They said they were going to forget about teaching me Irish, English and Maths, just the basics of them. They looked at what talents you had and encouraged me to paint, putting me in charge of the painting department from early on. They developed your personal skills which gave me a sense of finding myself in school, which was good. It built up my confidence and after a couple of years I went back into the Christian Brothers system and did my Group Cert.” When he left school he wanted to go to Art College but his parents said “you will never make a living as an artist” and really they couldn’t afford to send me. They said “you need to get a trade to earn a living.” With the Group Cert rather than the Leaving Cert Byrne was told he could only get a basic trade and he applied to Whessoe to become a welder. When he went in for the interview the guy said to him “what would you really like to do” and he told him he would really like to be an electrician but didn’t have the required Leaving Cert. Months passed by until one day there was a knock on the door and there was the guy who told him he was starting immediately to train as an electrician. He was thrilled. He served his time there and worked on some interesting jobs including on Lighthouses around the country. In the 80’s he decided he wanted to travel so he bought an old VW camper van ‘Katie May’ from his father, which he had used for work, and got sponsorship from VW and set off to drive to Australia with a friend! The Iran Iraq war was in full swing so they got caught up in the technicalities of that and had to turn back to Istanbul for six weeks to wait for a War Visa. That was an interesting experience in itself. Eventually reaching Australia he became a Flying Electrician, in the Outback, mainly fixing generators for the Aborigine population.

Returning from Australia he went back into ‘sparking’ however, a long term relationship which he had been in was in dissolved. “I was a bit upset about that, I was suffering, because I loved the woman, and I thought, I have to do something for myself.” “I took the garage from my parents as a studio, and painted and painted, and decided I really wanted to do this. Once I decided this it was funny how things fell into place. I saw the art exhibition on the railings of St. Stephen’s Green and I brought my paintings down – I was terrified as nobody had ever seen my work. I didn’t know you had to have a permit and the other artists objected, calling the police. In the midst of this a guy came along pushing a pram with a baby and said “have you got a gallery, have you got an agent – would you like an exhibition?” At that point I would have died in peace having achieved my goal. He had his first exhibition at the George Gallery and it was a great success.

Still working as an electrician, he came up with a plan to give up work, live cheaply and paint. He went to America for a few months to finance the purchase of a cheap house in the Liberties, which he bought for €15,000 and renovated it with no mortgage. He could walk everywhere, and used go up to the Fish and veg markets to paint, where it got to the stage that they actually fed him. Likewise with clothes he went to the Iveagh Market where a dealer used give him great pieces “cos he reminded her of her son.” All of this left him free to be an artist. There was talk at this time of the Berlin Wall coming down and he felt he should be there experiencing what was going on. Up came another old camper van and he set off for East Berlin which he hated but where, again, everything fell into place when he met a local underground events organiser, and found himself agreeing to spend six months working for an Irish Exhibition there. He was living in a dingy flat overlooking a cemetary and surviving on deepfried aubergine every night. The organiser decided at one point that Gerard was getting too thin and gave him a list of addresses, private homes, where he had to go each night for dinner on a rota, an experience which was an amazing insight into East German life.

When he came back to Ireland he had another exhibition of German pictures in 1992 in the George Gallery, which he says put him on the map, although it was still tough going and he was struggling. The George Gallery closed down but one night he had a strange dream in which is grandmother said to him “everything will be okay.” He went into town with his portfolio to meet an agent in Bewley’s. The agent didn’t turn up. Walking home he passed the then new Harrison Gallery which was just being set up and he called in on spec. The owner told him to bring his paintings in immediately and, a few days later, was looking for more as he had sold all of the others straight away. A couple of years later he was taken on by the Gorry Gallery where he had a number of sell-out exhibitions and who “were terrific to work with.” Security had come. These were very good years. Byrne’s grandmother lived beside the Botanic Gardens in Glasnevin, and the Turner Conservatory and Palm House there, have featured widely in his work. Byrne’s Palm House paintings almost exude the smell, the heat and tropical intenseness of exotic plants, that I remember as a child there. His paintings have a broad impressionistic style and he paints mainly outdoors. He has painted a lot around the colourful roads and coastlines of Dalkey where he now lives, and of France and other places he visits. “My prices took an increase but personally I didn’t go sky high. I know some artists were picking numbers out of the clouds but I kind of said no. When times were good we partied, we spent money, I was spending money on my home, that’s why I bought the house in Dalkey, I basically put my money into renovating my home.”

“Things were going so well for me, paintings sold off the easel, I painted and painted and it was a nice a life, but then the recession comes along and bites you in the ass. I’m like everybody else, I have a mortgage to pay, maintenance on kids, car to pay for. I got upset about the recession, it got me down, and then I said ‘hold on Gerry, it was a sobering thought, I became an artist to be an artist. I didn’t do it to get rich, so if I havent got money, so what, I still have my art, doing my art, so if it means selling my home, or cutting back, or whatever it means to do that, I am not going to stop being an artist. Sometimes these things free you up to do other things. In fact I have just got back from Berlin and that is good, you see other art in Galleries, and it makes you get out more into the world, out of your comfort zone. I rented the house last year for six months and I travelled to France and Italy, before I wouldn’t have had time to do that. He has also had a problem with a Gallery who were selling his paintings whilst he was away but when it came to being paid…….”this will be going to Court.” “During the Celtic Tiger, we all thought we were millionaires. I notice it now all the time around me, there is more chat, people are friendlier again, its more personal, and I think it’s a thing Irish people do well, we care for each other, we like caring for each other. With the snow everyone was out helping one another. In the boom we were all living in isolation behind closed doors, gated communities with bigger cars. I think it’s a good change. I get a lot of people saying ‘I wish I could afford your pictures’ and I say ‘ I wish you could buy my pictures’ so now I have started to do a lot of charcoals and they are working out more affordable for people.”

Byrne’s new website www.gerardbyrneartist.com is proving very popular with buyers in America, Australia and England, particulary with people who have connections with Ireland. Gerard Byrne’s work is available from the new Doorway Gallery in South Frederick Street and from his website. His works are in private and public collections so if you have any spare dosh now is the time to buy paintings which you will also have the pleasure of enjoying on your walls.

Gerard Byrne will be giving a talk in May in The National Gallery’s Lecture Series entitled ‘An Artists Perspective on Jack B Yeats.’