Emmet Brickley: Cork artist inspired by Edvard Munch and a teacher in Ashton
Emmet Brickley: "“I'm 32 now, and I've been painting for 12 years. I've been really lucky to have had times where I could paint full time, when I’ve had funding and grants, and commercially my work has been viable as well."
Emmet Brickley remembers vividly his earliest exposure to the visual arts. “My grandmother and grandaunt were both gifted painters,” he says. “When I’d call around to visit, I’d see their work out on the table. It just baffled me that adults would give themselves this time to be creative.”
The two specialised in landscapes and still lifes. “They weren’t doing anything dangerous, but the work was beautiful, and there was something really exciting about it. I have a few of my grandaunt’s paintings in the house, and even now, when people call round, she’s the one who’ll get the compliments.”
It was, Brickley believes, almost inevitable that he would go on to become an artist himself. His own interest is in figurative painting, a leaning he shares with Siobhán Collins and Joseph Heffernan, with whom he is currently showing in Final Figures, an exhibition curated by Dr Matthew White at the Lord Mayor’s Pavilion in Fitzgerald’s Park.
Brickley grew up in Blackrock, Cork, and completed his secondary education at Ashton School. “Our art teacher there, Mr Nott, was always very encouraging,” he remembers. “He treated us like third level students, really.”
Brickley went on to study at the Crawford College of Art and Design. “I managed to do nearly every module in my four years there,” he says. “I jumped around, from life drawing to print to multimedia, trying to figure out what it was I wanted to do. It was only in my final year that I settled on painting. Colin Crotty was tutoring us, and he would have been a big influence. He was doing big exhibitions himself, and that was exciting, to see your tutor having these shows when you’re a student.”
Once he settled on painting, Brickley found himself becoming more and more fascinated by the subject of the human figure. “Edvard Munch would have been a big influence. Everybody knows him for The Scream, but he did thousands of paintings, and I love how he openly deals with depression and loss. The contemporary Scottish painter Andrew Cranston is another influence; his work would be more illustrative than Munch’s.”
Brickley won two awards for his degree show in 2016, one sponsored by the Waterford gallerist Joan Clancy, the other by Alliance Francaise de Cork, which led to an exhibition the following year.
“I was lucky,” he says. “Winning those awards meant I was working toward something immediately. But the biggest thing I got out of the Degree Show was meeting clients. People who bought work at the show left me their details, we stayed connected, and some of them still buy work from me today.”
After college, Brickley was ready for a change of scene. “I’d been to Berlin a few times on holiday, and I liked the energy of the place. So myself and my girlfriend moved there for a few years. We had a great time. Again, I was really lucky. I had one decent commission that covered a lot of our expenses.
"I kept painting, but I ended up sending most of the work back to Ireland; I just found I couldn’t break into the art scene over there. The galleries were either too high-end for a young artist, or so underground that it felt unsafe to leave my work with them.”
Eventually, Brickley and his girlfriend moved back to Cork. “It was just before the covid pandemic, and we were happier to be here, where there were fields and places to stroll around in, than being trapped in the apartment in Berlin.”
He joined Sample Studios as an associate member. “I had a studio with them briefly, when they had the old FÁS building on Sullivan’s Quay, before I left for Berlin. I don’t have a studio with them now, but it’s great to be involved. They’re the lifeblood of the art scene in Cork, really.”
He and his girlfriend have since married. “We’ve saving for a house, so I work at home. It makes sense to keep my costs down. We have a big spare room that I’ve turned into a studio, and I paint there most days.”
Brickely has just begun work on a new suite of paintings. “I saw a short documentary on the people who clean the pool at the 9/11 memorial in New York. They spend five nights a week doing eight hour shifts. It’s very labour intensive, but they have a great sense of civic pride. The film is beautifully shot, and I think those images will be the starting point for the work I make next.”
He is also nearing the end of a course in software development. “I'm 32 now, and I've been painting for 12 years. I've been really lucky to have had times where I could paint full time, when I’ve had funding and grants, and commercially my work has been viable as well. But the plan now is to find work as a programmer. I’ll keep painting, of course, but having a day job should make it easier to earn a living.”
- Final Figures, featuring the work of Emmet Brickley, Siobhán Collins and Joseph Heffernan, is at the Lord Mayor’s Pavilion at Fitzgerald’s Park, Cork until February 22. Further information visit sample-studios.com
