Cork In 50 Artworks, No 34: Portrait of Fidel Castro, by Bill Griffin
Bill Griffin in 2005 with his portrait of Fidel Castro. Picture: Maurice O'Mahony
Few artists have had as colourful a life as Bill Griffin. A native of Cork, where he grew up on Barrett’s Terrace in Blarney St, he has lived in Allihies, on the Beara peninsula in West Cork, for many years.
He specialises in figurative painting, so it was not entirely surprising that he was the artist selected when the Cork-based Thomas Francis Meagher Society decided to commission a portrait of the revolutionary leader and late president of Cuba, Fidel Castro, back in 2005.
