GRANDDAD READS THE NEWS IN 1941
In October 1998, I began my Junior Cert art project, with the quirky title 'My Granny's Attic'. My plan was to put together a set of images of what you might find in my grannies' attics - pictures of old antiques, old photos, etc. I'd imagine that my grandmothers would have taken issue with the fact that I included a drawing of a rat in the project!!!
One of the first pictures that I decided to do was of an old photograph that was taken of my granddad, Patrick O'Keeffe, sitting on a deckchair and reading a newspaper in 1941. The objective was to make the picture look like an old black and white photograph. However, when I finished it, my family were certain that it actually resembled my granddad. This was a nice surprise, as I had never really drawn pictures of real people before. In fact, animals had been my favourite subjects.
Out of curiosity, I decided to draw pictures of more old family photos, but now with the intention of achieving strong resemblances. The more I drew, the more I got excited about them. With every picture, I focused more and more of my attention on the face, trying hard to achieve a good deal of accuracy in my portrayals. With this, my drawings evolved from mainly body-length pictures to pictures focusing solely on the face. Over the course of the project, I found that the vast majority of the images included were of old family photographs of ancestors that I had never met but was gradually coming to know. With this, I began to develop a separate interest in genealogy.
BRANCHING OUT
When the project concluded in the summer of 1999, I continued to draw more photos of great-grandparents and granduncles. However, my supply of old family photos soon ran dry and I moved onto pictures of people from another of my pet interests: history. Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela and John F. Kennedy became my subjects and I filled up many folders with many portraits. This was until somewhere in the middle of the year 2000, when I began to become restless and felt the need to do more than simply draw portraits and then hide them in these folders.
Perhaps naively, I embarked on visits to various galleries and shops in Dublin, asking if they would be interested my work. I received polite refusals from most, but it was in the Millrace Gallery in Phibsboro that the owner gave me some valuable advice. Looking through my work, he told me that he would take my contact details, in case anybody would come to him in search of portraits. When he came across a drawing that I had done of the Irish soccer pundit, Eamon Dunphy, he suggested that I send it to him. I did not consider this seriously until later that year, when a group of musicians from the Artane Boys Band, of which I was then a member, were due to perform in RTE one Saturday night. I knew that Eamon Dunphy would be in RTE on that night for his weekly punditry on 'The Premiership', and decided to bring my drawing of him along. When I met him and gave the picture to him, a colleague mentioned to me that it was the first time that he ever saw Eamon Dunphy stuck for words!!!
By this stage, I had developed a great passion for drawing portraits, and always relished undertaking the tough challenge of trying to achieve an absolute accuracy on the page. Faces are extremely delicate subjects, as the slightest discrepancy can be recognized not as slight, but in fact it can result in the drawing being regarded as a failure. Therefore, when drawing a portrait, you are always walking a tight-rope where the tension is real and there is very little sense of relaxation. But mixed with this is the excitement of the prospect of creating the illusion of a person with the aid of a small stick of graphite and a white sheet of paper. With every portrait that is drawn, the momentum and motivation to do the next one increases.
THE 'BERTIE AND BILL FACTOR'
The Eamon Dunphy experience whetted my appetite and made me more aware of what was possible. This came into play towards the end of 2000, when I heard on the news one night that Bill Clinton was due to visit Ireland. There and then, I decided that he was going to receive a drawing of himself. I had no idea how he would receive it, but my decision was set in stone: he was going to receive it!
I began to think of where he might visit during his trip, but I could not find out. I then asked myself who he was likely to meet, thinking that perhaps I could send it to that person and ask them to give the drawing to him. The only people that I knew he was likely to meet were the President and the Taoiseach. Not thinking that it was very likely that they might give him my portrait on my behalf, I knew that there was nothing to lose and much to gain, so I decided to send it to one of them. The Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, was my preferred choice, as I thought that his meeting with Clinton would be less formal than that between the two Heads of State.
With that, I drew my portrait of Bill Clinton and wrote my letter to the Taoiseach, asking him to give my portrait to the U.S. President. Clinton came and went. To my utter shock and pure delight, I received a letter in mid-December from Bertie Ahern, informing me that he had passed on my portrait to Clinton's White House Special Assistant, who would pass it on to the President on their return to the White House!!! I could not believe what had just happened - somehow, a drawing that I had done had managed to find its way into the hands of the most powerful man in the world, through the hands of the leader of our country. A whole new world opened up and the possibilities became clearer....
I thought to myself, if the Taoiseach would take the time out to acknowledge my work, who else would? My fascination with history suddenly developed a connection with my portraits and I realised that I had an opportunity to tap into the worlds that I found myself enthralled with in the pages of the books that I loved to read. I drew a portrait of Bertie Ahern to thank him for his kindness, before launching into a set of experiences that I never thought would ever come my way…
I sent portraits to world leaders past and present, Nobel Laureates, achievers, artists and thinkers. I could not believe what was happening as I found letters of appreciation beginning to come through my letterbox from taoisigh, U.S. Presidents, and giants from history. This continued to balloon over the years from 2001. I found myself being invited to visit the former Taoiseach, Charlie Haughey, at his home in Abbeville; presenting a portrait to Manchester United's Alex Ferguson at the home of the Irish race horse magnate, J. P. McManus; and experiencing the sheer excitement of meeting my childhood hero, Norman Wisdom and presenting him with a portrait I had drawn for him, at a car show in Dublin, where we sat in a Rolls Royce that he once owned! This was a journey that I had never envisaged undertaking, but was one that I was hugely enjoying.
A TAOISEACH, A POPE AND A PHONE-CALL
One of the highlights came in July 2005 when I drew a portrait of the then newly-elected pope, Benedict XVI. Just after I completed it, a man that I knew mentioned to me that Bertie Ahern was due to meet him in the Vatican later that week, and suggested that I contact the Taoiseach’s office with a view to having him present the portrait to the pontiff when he met him in Rome.
I latched onto the idea immediately, and the very next day, 5 July, I phoned Bertie Ahern’s constituency office in Drumcondra, spoke with his secretary and told her what I had done. I asked about the possibility of the Taoiseach presenting my drawing to the pope in the Vatican. She told me that if I dropped it to her office that evening, she would see what she could do.
On Thursday, 7 July, Bertie Ahern met Pope Benedict in the Vatican, in what was the new pope’s first meeting with a European head of government. The next day, I was completely flabbergasted to read in the Irish Independent newspaper that Bertie Ahern had presented my drawing to the pope for me. To put the icing on the cake, on Thursday, 14 July, I received a package from the Taoiseach, in which he enclosed a personal note, telling me that he gave my portrait to Pope Benedict, as well as an A4-sized photo of himself, with the Irish Ambassador to the Vatican, and the pope standing in a circle and smiling down at my drawing, which was sitting happily in the pope’s hands. I couldn't believe what had just happened - it was a combination of ecstasy, disbelief, bewilderment and appreciation.
AND SO IT CONTINUES....
Since then, there have been more exciting experiences and encounters, and my drawings have, I hope, continued to evolve and improve. Recently, I have been delighted to see them on display and sale in galleries - something that I had first attempted to achieve nearly a full decade ago, before I got side-tracked with the above activities.
I’m very excited about what is yet to come, knowing from experience that things that you never expect to ever happen can very suddenly become a reality. Little did my granddad know what he was starting when he sat down to read his newspaper back in 1941!!!
