Salvatore of Lucan on his prize-winning portrait of his mother doing reiki
Salvatore of Lucan and his winning entry in the Zurich Portrait Prize, entitled Me Ma Healing Me.
"I’m not sure I’d be into Reiki if it was anyone but my mother,” says Salvatore of Lucan of his winning entry in the Zurich Portrait Prize. Currently on display at the Crawford gallery in Cork, the painting won €15,000 for the intriguingly-named Dublin artist, as well as a €5,000 commission to complete a new portrait for the National Portrait Collection at the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin.
Salvatore’s portrait, Me Ma Healing Me, was inspired by his mother’s habit of practicing reiki healing on him whenever he’s feeling low.
“It’s an interesting subject for a painting," he says, "there’s a closeness to the experience, just from it being my mom doing the healing.”
Two other highly commended artists – Vanessa Jones and Tom McLean - were each awarded prizes of €1,500, while Della Cowper-Gray, the winner of the Zurich Young Portrait Prize, for artists up to the age of 18, was awarded €500. All 44 artworks shortlisted for the prizes were shown at the National Gallery, and the exhibition has now travelled to Cork, where it runs at the Crawford Art Gallery until July 17.
Salvatore, a graduate of the National College of Art in Dublin, has been something of a fixture of the Zurich Prize competition in recent years, being highly commended in 2019 for a painting called Lucy with 3 hands and me holding onto her leg, and shortlisted in 2018 for another called Me and my Dad in McDonalds.
The 28-year-old, whose real name is Salvadore Fullam, adopted his nom de plume because it reminded him of Renaissance artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, who were known by their place of birth. But it also reflects on his mixed race heritage.
“My father’s from Bangladesh, and my mother’s from Dublin,” he explains. “My mother gave me the name Salvatore because it’s Italian, and she figured Italy is somewhere between Ireland and Bangladesh. But she also figured I’d be more likely to be taken for European, with a name like that; she didn’t want me getting any racist abuse.
"I’m always being asked where I’m from, and when I explain my background, people want to know if I’ve been to Bangladesh, and of course I haven’t, and I didn’t know my father growing up. So the name Salvatore of Lucan establishes that I’m actually from Lucan in Dublin.”
Salvatore has a very distinctive painting style, which recalls that of Surrealist artists such as Leonora Carrington. Me Ma Healing Me is typical of his work in that it is large in scale, executed in oils on canvas, and takes as its subject matter an incident or experience from his own life. He believes the best painting he has done is Me and my Dad in McDonalds, shortlisted in 2018, which describes his first ever meeting with his father, in New York that year. It was, he recalls, an awkward encounter.
“My father is so fundamentally religious that God was all he really wanted to talk about,” he says. “Though he did bring me some photographs of his mother and so on, and that was interesting as I’d always been curious about that side of the family.
"But it was just the one meeting, and when I went to paint it, I tried to capture the confusion I felt at the time; the painting works as well as it does because I put us both on different axes. After that, he sent me a few messages on Facebook, but it was just videos of people singing Islamic chants. I’ve heard nothing from him in the past few years, and he’s never seen the painting.”
Salvatore’s highly commended painting of 2019, Lucy with 3 hands and me holding onto her leg, featured his girlfriend of the previous few years lying on her bed as he squats on the floor, both of them turning away to check their mobile phones.
“We were just finishing up around then; it’s a break-up painting, really. I’d painted Lucy many times before, but she reckons that’s her favourite. My sister complains that I’ve never asked her to pose for me; she reckons I only paint female authority figures and love interests, and maybe there’s something in that. But I’ve always been happy painting my family and friends.”
Salvatore is not entirely sure whose portrait he will work on for his Zurich Prize commission. “I’d love to paint Paul McGrath,” he says. “But I’m still waiting for that to be confirmed.”
Zurich Portrait Prize 2021, Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, until July 17
- Vanessa Jones is a native of Tennessee and an MFA graduate from NCAD, where she now works as an assistant lecturer in the Painting Department. Her highly commended painting Cabbage Baby is a self-portrait, in oil on linen, and is modelled after the Italian artist Sandro Botticelli’s portraits of the notorious bankers and politicians, the Medicis.
- Given that most of the works shortlisted for the Zurich Prize were made during 2020 and 2021, it was inevitable that any number of them would reflect on the Covid-19 pandemic and the resultant lockdowns. Cork-based Mollie Douthit’s painting in oil on linen describes the impact the crisis had on her mental health. Its title may resonate with many; Life in lockdown Part IV; Laying on my kitchen floor with lavender eye mask to stave off a migraine.
- The Zurich Prize is open to work in any variety of media, and the conceptual artist Jonathan Mayhew certainly took this to heart with his sculpture, All I could do was sit and collect dust. Inspired by the first Covid lockdown, “when nothing seemed possible,” it consists of a ball of the artist’s hair, dust and detritus.
- Every year, the Zurich Young Portrait Prize turns up some astonishing talents. In 2021, the overall winner in 2021 was Della Cowper-Gray, aged 14, from Co Kildare, whose hyper-realist portrait in pencil and pastel of her father, artist Brad Gray, is so accomplished it could surely have been a contender in the adult section. Titled ‘Painting in a different world now,’ it reflects on how the Covid crisis has impacted on artists as much as everyone else.
- The winner of the 12-15 years category was Lijun Ma, aged 15, for her wonderful painting, Self-portrait, while the winner of the 6 years and under category was Marianna Krolik, aged 6, for her expressive study in watercolour and pencil on paper of her best friend, Mia.
Further information is available at crawfordartgallery.ie.target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer"> The 2022 Zurich Prize competition is now open for entries, for more information visit nationalgallery.ie.
