Question of Taste: West Cork-based artist Ian Humphreys
Artist Ian Humphreys. Picture: Geoff Greenham
West Cork-based artist Ian Humphreys was born in Hertfordshire, England, into a large family of eight children. “I’ve painted all my life and I moved to West Cork in 1999 and have painted full time ever since,” says the artist, who lives on Heir Island.
- Ian currently has an exhibition at Kenmare Butter Market until Sept 25, entitled My Journey in Paint 1999 to 2022.
Vertical Thoughts: Morton Feldman and the Visual Arts, produced by the Irish Museum of Modern Art. I’ve been dipping in and out of this book over the past few months and it fascinates me because Morton Feldman knew and had a relationship with all the abstract painters in America in the 1940s and ‘50s. It’s an unusual insight into their lives and their work.
I really enjoyed Quartet. It’s not a new film but I saw it recently for the first time. It has some wonderful music and an intriguing story and is played by some of my favourite actors including Maggie Smith, Michael Gambon, Billy Connolly and Tom Courtenay. It was directed by Dustin Hoffman. The film made me laugh and smile and really moved me.
Recently my favourite piece of music has been ‘Little Bird’ by Lisa Hannigan. I’ve used some of the lyrics as titles for my current works. We were lucky to hear her sing during the summer at our lovely local pub, Levis’ in Ballydehob.
Rembrandt’s portrait of Margheride Geer 1661. I saw it when I was nine and to this day it still haunts me.
The Mark Rothko exhibition at the Tate modern in London where his large colour field paintings transfixed me. I felt completely drawn in by them and needed to look at them for a very long time. They stay with to this day.
I don’t follow programmes on TV but I do watch YouTube. I look up different artists from the past and present and watch slide shows of their work or exhibitions. I love listening to music and I was given a present of Alexa recently to help me along! On winter evenings I love to have my fire lighting, listen to music and look though my collection of art books with a fine French bottle of red wine.
I listen to BBC Radio 4 and my favourite is Desert Island Discs or the Test Cricket commentary.
Howard Hodgkin, Georgio Morandi and Mark Rothko.
When I was about 14 I was in the Tate Modern in London looking at the Turner paintings and the famous film star, James Mason, came over to me and asked me what I thought of the paintings. We chatted and we ended up walking around the whole exhibition together. He was asking me questions about what I saw and liked and thought about the paintings. He was fascinated by the paintings and Turner was his favourite artist. Turner is my favourite English artist and he is who I named my son Joseph after.
I think it would be very exciting to have been around in the 1940s and 1950s in America at the time of the abstract expressionists such as Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline and Mark Rothko, etc.
We are lucky to live in a lovely old schoolhouse with a walled garden. We have bats and starlings nesting in the roof and swallows nests in the log shed. We have planted many indigenous plants to support insect and birdlife. We built a pond last summer in the garden as it is apparently one of the best things that you can do to support the natural environment. It’s amazing to watch the dragonflies and all the other creatures that have found it.
