Naked truth: Cork artist David Barrett on his exhibition of nude paintings
Cork artist David Barrett currently has an exhibition at the Quay Co-op.
David Barrett’s new exhibition of paintings at the Another Place gallery at the Quay Co-op in Cork is called Apologies, and mostly features nudes. Despite the title, Barrett’s interest is unlikely to ever cause him regret.
“I initially started painting the human figure as a kind of reaction to the Catholic upbringing I had in the 1980s,” he says. “What Fintan O'Toole called ‘the hysterical hatred of the human body’ was prevalent in Ireland at that time. But I was an altar boy and I went to a religious school, and all the wonderful figurative painting I saw growing up was religious. I loved the Baroque nature of that style of painting; the tonalities, and the richness of the colours.”
It seemed strange that the kind of portraiture promoted by the church throughout history was so completely out of favour in the late 20th century. “It just wasn't a thing you did, you know? But that was why I became so engaged with painting the human figure; it’s informed by the visual language of those religious artists.”
Finding people to model hasn't been a problem for Barrett. “Most of them would be people who know each other. So I would have had a particular model and she might know somebody else who's interested for their own reasons in modelling. Or I might ask if somebody knew anybody. They're all amateurs. I don't think there's anybody in the show, bar one, who would be termed a professional life model. So they're all people whose only experience of life modelling would have been with me."
Barrett’s interest was encouraged in the art department at the Regional Technical College in his native Galway, where he studied from 1983-89. “I was really lucky,” he says. “I had some very good teachers. People like Lochlann Hoare, John Behan and Hugh McCormack. One day a week was spent in the life room, and briefly, for that period of time, there was an obsession with old-fashioned drawing and painting techniques, and paint application, right down to how much paint you had on your brush. I got a great education there. I learned an awful lot.”
Barrett was not long out of college when he began winning commissions for portraits. “I painted the head of Ibec,” he remembers,” and around the same time, I was commissioned by Kenny's Art Gallery and Bookshop in Galway to paint the poet Thomas McCarthy.”
The most memorable job was when Galway County Council commissioned him to paint the Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, Michael D Higgins. “I hadn’t known he was a smoker. I painted him in a small room of his house in Galway, and he chain-smoked Rothmans the whole time I was there. At the end of the session, I could hardly see him, the room was so thick with smoke.
“He was really nice, and very patient, but he didn't have a lot of time to give me, because even then he was a very busy man. And what time he gave me was filled with cigarette smoke.”
Galway County Council seemed perfectly happy with the portrait he handed in. “But unfortunately, I've never seen it since. I don't know where it is. But I did a study in chalks before I painted the portrait, and when Michael D was running for president in 2011, I emailed his office and said, he might not remember this, but it's a work I did from life, and if he's interested, I’ll give it to him. I got an email back instantly saying, yeah, Michael would like to have it.
“So I met him in Cork just before he was elected President and I handed it over. I was surprised he'd remembered, and I was really pleased that he wanted it. Who knows but it might be hanging somewhere in Áras an Uachtaráin.”
Even with commissions coming in, Barrett soon realised he could not make a living painting portraits. He returned to college in Cork and qualified as a secondary teacher. He now teaches in Rochestown. “I'm glad I did that because it freed me up,” he says. “Once I started teaching, I could paint what I wanted, and work at the pace I wanted. And at the same time, I was doing an enjoyable and rewarding job and getting well paid for it, too. I'm nearly finished teaching now. I’ll do it for another year or two. But that was a good career path for me.”
Barrett had a studio at Backwater Artists on Wandesford Quay for ten years, and now works at Outlaw Studios on the Marino. For a few years in between, during the covid lockdowns, he had no space to paint in.
“I really missed the social interaction I had with the models,” he says. “It's not only their trust and their time and their patience, they also give me their company, you know, and I missed that.”
He always paints from life. “The process can be slow,” he says. “But I'm very lucky with the people I work with. They’re infinitely patient. The images grow over time. I don't compose them so much as improvise them as I go along. The models chat, and things happen. It's very much a collaborative kind of process.”
Like many artists in Cork, he is often frustrated by the lack of opportunity for exhibitions. “There are four or five established galleries running on a commercial basis in Dublin that genuinely provide an outlet for painters. We haven’t really had that here. But this new space at the Quay Co-op is right in town, and it has space and light; it’s beautiful.”
Barrett is not driven by sales, he says. “I have my own reasons for doing this stuff. Showing art is nice, and selling is great, but that's not why you do it. You do it because you have to, and you can't not do it. I still get the same pleasure from painting as I always did, and that's the most important thing. I have rheumatoid arthritis in both hands at the minute, and it’s quite uncomfortable. But it doesn't stop me painting, and it never will.”
- David Barrett, Apologies is at Another Place at the Quay Co-op in Cork until November 28. davidbarrettpainter.co.uk
