Keith Anderson: Self-taught Cork artist produces stunning images of his native city
Keith Anderson, Cork artist.
Self-taught artist and former construction worker Keith Anderson went knocking at the door of The Elysian, currently Cork’s tallest building, one sunny day three years ago.
“I just always wanted to see the view from the top,” he says. “So one day I just went into town and boldly went up to the guy in the office, who happened to be the building manager. We chatted and it turned out he was a keen photographer.
“All of a sudden, I found myself up there. It was that glorious summer we had three years back. The light was fantastic. I took photographs of the city, 360 degrees, all the way around.”
The oil paintings Anderson has based on these photos depict Cork city as a vividly coloured toy-town, buildings and landmarks identifiable, buses caught in the act of trundling on their routes, pedestrians fixed forever on their journeys. The paintings’ detail is immersive, both for the viewer and, Anderson says, for the artist.
“I want to draw people in with my work: I want you to get lost in the painting,” he says. “You can pick out the Opera House, Shandon. You can follow the roads around, you can pick out the people walking. When I’m painting them, I get so lost in them it’s almost as though I’m in the painting myself.”
Entirely self-taught, Anderson has never been to art college, and didn’t study art in school. But he always loved to draw.
“When I was very little, I remember getting up in school and telling everyone in my loudest voice that when I grew up, I was going to be an artist,” he says. “It’s just something that’s kind of in you. But when I was in sixth class in Douglas primary school, my teacher told my parents not to allow me to take art when I went to secondary because it was a ‘wasted subject.’ So I did science instead, and I hated it. I used to go home and draw in the evenings.”
For many years, Anderson worked in construction and drew and painted in his spare time. Then he lost his job.
“When I got made redundant, the job I had been doing, an industrial flooring job, didn’t really lend itself to doing anything else: it wasn’t a trade,” he says. “It was a well-paid job while it existed, but when it was gone, all I was ever going to get was more labouring, more back-breaking crap.
“No-one knows more than I do what it’s like to get up and literally dread where you’re going for the day, because I did it for years.” Very much operating outside the fine art world, Anderson has been developing his photo-real pencil and charcoal portraiture: boxing stars and footballers feature alongside actors in his choice of subject. He takes portrait commissions too, and the images, as well as stop-motion footage of him making them, are popular on social media, although he has never exhibited his work.
Anderson won RTÉ Painting the Nation’s Big Picture competition in 2016 for Pure Cork Like, a landscape from Bell’s Field towards Shandon tower and the North Cathedral, and went on to take part in the TV competition the following year.
It was the first public recognition he had received for his work. “The winner was being presented on the Six One news and they had it as the backdrop while the girl was doing the weather forecast,” he says with a smile. “I was in the pub, and all my buddies were there, and there was a massive cheer.”
His series of Cork cityscapes is growing, even though each takes between 140 and 200 hours to complete. In the future, he’d love to exhibit them as a collection, and he’s working on plans to sell prints of his work. In the meantime, he’s motivated by a ferocious drive to improve.
“It’s a journey I don’t want to stop,” he says. “I’m obsessed with improving, with making each one better than the last.” Without dwelling on it, it seems, Anderson is steadily working towards his masterpiece.
“I’m very naive: I’ve always had this fantasy that one day I’m going to do this picture that’s going to speak to everything that I’ve done,” he says.
“But I don’t think I’m close yet. I’m my own greatest critic and I’m very aware of where I am. I’m only scratching the surface. I’m not even close to where I’m going. Come back to me in two or three years, I’m not joking.”
- Keith Anderson’s artwork can be seen and he can be contacted via his social media channels, including his Facebook.
