Brian Bourke, 87: 'As an artist you need that ferocious independence'
Brian Bourke at the National Gallery.
At 87, the artist Brian Bourke still has a work ethic that belies the non-conformist nature of his calling. “If the weather was a bit better,” he says. “I’d be out in the landscape. As it is, I’m in the studio every day. I have work left over from years ago that I’m looking at again. I’d like to think I’m advancing all the time, but I do find – in spite of myself – that I circle back to the same ideas.”
Bourke is celebrated as a painter and sculptor, but it is his works in pastels that are currently on show, alongside those by Edgar Degas, Jean-Francois Millet and Rosalba Carriera, at an exhibition called Pastel Revealed at the National Gallery of Ireland.
