+34“In the coming world of AI dominance the most important thing we can do is try to connect on a human level,” says Padraig McCaul
Padraig McCaul: ‘In a world of AI dominance the most important thing we can do is connect on a human level’“In the coming world of AI dominance the most important thing we can do is try to connect on a human level, with personal integrity,” says renowned Irish contemporary artist Padraig McCaul.
“The arts will be critical to that. ”aims to create expressive, evocative landscape art inspired by the wild, untamed nature of the West of Ireland. He is a self taught artist whose paintings can be found in many private collections throughout Ireland, England and America.
He often paints old, stone farmhouses which have become part of the fabric of the countryside – there is a sadness and a loneliness to these old homes which have borne witness to over 100 years of Irish emigration. Was a career as an artist something you always aspired to? Tell us about your path to where you are today.
I always aspired to having a career in the creative arts, but in school I always dreamt that it would be something to do with music. My love of art came later. Music has been a passion of mine from the age of 14 or 15 and was nurtured in school, where I played clarinet and piano and started writing my own songs .
I went on to study music in Maynooth University, and started playing in a number of bands in Dublin. I spent fifteen years with the Harvest Ministers, a Dublin based band formed around the songwriting talents of Will Merriman. After releasing four albums and experiencing numerous highs but more lows, the band eventually wound down.
I had always been interested in drawing but never had the time to give to painting, so with the free time I now had I threw myself into painting. It became a way of winding down at the weekends from a pretty stressful job I had at the time in software production management, and I quickly realised that people liked what I was doing and wanted to buy my paintings.
I started to exhibit at Art Ireland in the RDS and I found a number of galleries that wanted to show my work, all of which led me to realise I could make a career of it. One of the first people to invite me to exhibit with them was Denise Donnelly, at the Bad Art Gallery in Dublin. I’ve been with Denise ever since, and we are celebrating 20 years together with my new show in the Doorway Gallery.
What is your process when creating a new work? How do certain themes and experiences feed into or present themselves in your art? A landscape piece might start with something catching my eye on a car journey or a walk in the West. I might take some sketches or photographs but if the image stays with me then I will work on the painting from memory.
I never look for detail, but instead focus on the structure or composition and build the painting from that. The colours reveal themselves. I have been using the same colour palette for the past 20 years and I think of them as the words I need to describe the landscapes of the West of Ireland that I paint. My figurative pieces can be more inward looking, a way to express more personal feelings I may have at the time.
They started as a way of including my own family in the landscapes I was painting, so a lot of them will feature family units and groups. I have always been drawn to the beauty of the West of Ireland, the wildness of the coast and the colours and contours of the landscape . We lived on Achill Island for ten years and brought our children through primary school there, it was magical.
Over that time the landscape and colours just seep into you like osmosis. I think the energy from the landscape starts to come through the paintings, instead of painting pictures I try to capture that energy. Donald Teskey would be someone I really admire and look up to. His coastal paintings, the palette he uses, they are wonderful.
And his more recent river bank paintings, he’s a real master, and very inspirational. Having a sold out exhibition in Fremantle, Australia in 2018 is certainly one of them, but the highlight so far has been seeing my work being used on a Broadway stage in New York in 2019 as part of the Irish contemporary dance productionby Kathy Fahy. I was commissioned to create 20 pieces to provide the projected backdrop for the show.
The music was performed onstage by the Mayo Concert Orchestra and I was lucky enough to also play in the orchestra. The time spent actually painting or creating is the easy and the smallest part of the working day. The time spent beating yourself up and questioning your value and worth and which eventually leads to you creating something you are happy with , that is a challenge you have to get through each day. Try and find your own voice, keep looking for something that only you can offer, that is uniquely yours. In the coming world of AI dominance the most important thing we can do is try to connect on a human level, with personal integrity, and the arts will be critical to that. My garden.
I get to walk through my garden every day to get to the studio and I get such pleasure from it. It is like a living canvas.by David Bayles and Ted Orland. I came across it when I was starting out over twenty years ago and it has provided so much support and insight into how the artist mind ’works’. The Godfather Part III’ve been listening a lot recently to the latest album from The Cure,.
Rather than a single song I like to find an album that sets a mood and that I can just keep on repeat for as long as I’m painting. Pink Floyd can be great for that, and for a happier more upbeat mood I might jump onto something like the Ezra Collective.in the Gaiety Theatre was mesmerising. It was so good to see such a high quality show being produced in Ireland.
Seeing the Rembrandt exhibition in Amsterdam’s Ryjksmuseum for the first time. His use light and shade, almost exaggerated, to make his figures and subject matter stand out really stayed with me,Don’t go to art college if what you love is painting. I had been considering doing a part time fine art degree but was dissuaded by a group of English artists who were exhibiting at Art Ireland .
They felt that I had found my own style and that I should focus on developing that. That was twenty years ago, best advice ever. An old recording on vinyl of Rachmaninov’s second piano concerto by Arturo Michelangeli. It was in my dad’s collection and I still have it.
The second movement is one of the most beautiful pieces of music I have ever heard. My dad never lived to see me as an artist, I only started painting after he died. but I have always felt he’s been watching over me and giving me a gentle nudge when I need it most. Keeping yourself motivated to get through the days when nothing is coming to you, when you are feeling empty and a bit lost.
How a piece of art that can evoke such a profound response in people. It is hugely rewarding to see it happen with one of my own pieces. It takes on a life of itself outside of the brush strokes and paint on the canvas.
Arts Irish Artist My Life In Culture Padraig Mccaul
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