This interview took place in the artist’s studio, which is fairly near the centre of Belfast and is roughly a mile from the art college where he has spent most of his working life. The studio is in a loft with views out over Belfast. The space itself is cluttered and crowded, so much so that one might wonder how the artist ever manages to paint there. Posters, examples of children’s art, and his own art jostle with a veritable altar of consumer packaging in the form of boxes, tins, packets and the like, neatly arranged and flanked by magazines in cellophane wrapping.
The artist himself, rather like the simple but elegant colour combinations of his paintings, is dressed in a white linen suit and blue shirt (Fig 1). Being a gregarious and sociable man, he produces sandwiches and a rather good bottle of wine during the interview.

Brian McAvera (BMcA): Neil, you were born in 1940 in Kearsley, Lancashire. By the age of fifteen you were in Bolton College of Art, and by eighteen at Lancaster College of Art where you ended up teaching part-time until 1962—which was when you came to work part-time in the then Belfast College of Art. Almost forty years later you still retain your Lancashire accent. How do you consider yourself to have been shaped by your early background, and what impelled you towards art by the age of fifteen?
Neil Shawcross (NS): I don’t feel I’m from Lancashire. I’m very much at home here — never had any desire to live, or exhibit anywhere else though I love going to America. When I arrived I was immediately aware of the quality of the art here, John Turner, Romeo Togood and Tom Carr, and soon felt part of it. My training had been in drawing and painting in oil, whereas here I soon developed my interest in watercolour. I did have a long training in Lancashire. I’ve a twin brother. All we did from pre-school days onwards was draw and paint. I hated school generally but the art sessions interested me. Life became wonderful at Junior Art School [In those days you could transfer to a junior art school if you showed promise]. Half of the time was spent on arts and crafts, rather like what Foundation in art school is like now.
I don’t know where the interest in the visual arts came from. My parents played a lot of music and my two older brothers are musicians but there was no art on the walls. From my teens I would have been bringing in reproductions into the house, which I could hang. My parents weren’t aware of the visual arts but they liked theatre. Yet my interest in art is there from my first memories of school: sketching on the blackboard! I loved the seven or eight years of studying painting, one long Foundation course really. It was a Euston Road School kind of grounding, which is why I was so comfortable with Tom Carr. There was nothing I wanted to get away from [when I came to Northern Ireland]. I do find the industrial landscapes of Lancashire very exciting. Any photographs I take are always of architecture, and very much separated from my painting. I’m a figurative painter but I don’t like people in my photos. I find American architecture very exciting, the sense of scale, the monumental quality – similarly with Lancashire. My father and grandfather were from mill backgrounds, though I don’t think that permeates into my work at all.

Red and green have a fascination for me … the drama … it’s the most satisfying contrast of colours for me (Fig 11). I do remember often walking into the centre of Bolton, four to five miles away. There were two very pleasant houses, bungalow types, different from the usual industrial architecture. One had woodwork painted in green, the other was red. I do remember always feeling a tingle that the colours triggered in me. I always felt good looking at them.

BMcA: You have always taught, and from 1968 it has been full-time. Apart from the financial security, what are the positives and negatives of this in relation to your art practice?
NS: No negatives. I’m with the activity of drawing and painting every day, either doing or observing. You’re working with exciting, young, gifted people, observing so many ways of applying and using paint… If you are open to it, it’s a learning experience. It’s only twenty hours a week maximum. If I wasn’t in Art College I wouldn’t necessarily do any more painting than I do now. I’ve always kept part of the day for the studio. In my work the actual time in the studio is not crucial. It’s in my head … it’s being with people, observing children … that’s my research. In terms of the Caldwell Gallery exhibition [Belfast, March 2002 which featured still-lifes and nudes] I’ve always taught life drawing and painting (Fig 9 and 10). I organise the life room activity. In the previous year students were mad keen to do figure drawing and were fond of moving poses. Robert, the model, is a painter himself. He knows what’s required. Gets into terrific poses and gestures. During a morning he’ll do maybe thirty to forty different poses. I rarely work with the students but I’d take out pen or pencil and jot down poses on the back of an envelope or scrap paper. The notes for these sessions resulted in about half of the last show. I felt that the little drawings worked as groups very well so I used a grid format to translate them into paintings. They all became female! I used Robert’s gestures but it’s the female image that engages me (Fig 7). Nudes. All nudes...Bonnard, Matisse, aspects of every nude you’ve observed in Fine Art, drawings of Margie [his wife] done years ago. So I joke with Robert and call him Roberta! The painting behind you Brian [a nude in green against a red background] is of Robert—but I do a little bit of surgery! When I’m painting the big nudes, or still-lifes, I never have a model, unless it’s for the portraits. Everything else is shorthand notes or memory.

BMcA: Obviously you work mainly at night or at weekends. Can you tell us what your normal studio practice is – when you work and so forth?
NS: Most days I’m in the studios in Art College, observing, advising, learning, ‘doing’ little sketches occasionally … maturing … sifting through the head. I have in my head Before Bonnie [his granddaughter] and After Bonnie. Before Bonnie I would always make a beeline for my studio, mid-afternoon, circa three to three-thirty. I always have an agenda. Painting is an ongoing process, you’re always pushing it, learning, it’s a physical and emotional relationship with paint. I use physical and still life images to trigger me. Over the years you build up knowledge of what paint can do. A constant activity. I don’t need to think, as it’s a continual cycle. I’d work to seven or seven-thirty and then go home. After Bonnie, I’d always go and see her. We looked after her when her parents were at work. Bonnie came to us early in the morning. To help them out—we live in Hillsborough, she’s in Belfast—I would bring her back to Belfast after college, and then work in studio. I still do that—go and see her—and extend my studio time here. I arrive at six and work on still-lifes and nudes and so forth. For the portraits, however, I use the big studios in the college. They can be used at any time of the day, depending on the availability of the sitter or studio. The recent portrait of Terry Frost was painted in Dublin in Hillsborough Art Gallery where his exhibition was on. He sat for me one morning. It’s always only one session for a portrait (Fig 8). I use the college studios a great deal at night also.

In terms of my work process I stretch paper a good deal and would prepare maybe a dozen surfaces, a technician’s job really but I do it. It’s almost like taking a day off. I love the company of radio, music or talk but mainly chat. Any Questions. Front Row arts review. It keeps me informed as well.

My work isn’t about ideas; it’s about creating exciting uses of paint. The images I select are as simple as possible. They give me the freedom to extend and push barriers. All this stuff in the studio [altars of empty cereal boxes, packets, tins, magazines, books, children’s paintings etc.], it’s me loving to be stimulated by colour especially. My house is coming down with stuff! When I’m in America I get great pleasure walking around the hyper-marts. The graphics! The colour!

BMcA: Was portraiture you first love? And isn’t there a contradiction between saying that you like simple forms — and doing portraits!
NS: At Lancashire we were allowed into the part-timers’ class, taught by a Mr Marriner. We could work in studio with him. He always brought in ‘characters’ to pose as he was teaching portraiture. He didn’t instruct us, just let us use the model. With two or three of the ones I worked on, life drawings and paintings, it was the only time I felt that I had impressed someone. A group of the staff made it obvious that they liked the work in this area. I didn’t know what the hell I was doing—never have been conscious of what I was about. I have a slide of one of the earliest ones—just a head—occasionally I did full-lengths. It was only later on when I observed children drawing people that I was amazed to see that some of them started at the feet and worked up, like drawing a tree. I was fascinated by that method. I loved their line drawings and how they would put paint on. That’s influenced me a great deal in the portraits. I don’t like commissions. I much prefer particular people to trigger me off. Ted Hickey knew my work well and knew I’d respond to Francis Stuart (Fig 4). There are some people that immediately I see them, the painting is done in my head straightaway — I see it so clearly. David Cook, the Lord Mayor … I had seen him at one of Mercy Hunter’s parties and thought that he would make a great portrait. I’ve been lucky. There are only half a dozen portraits that I’ve been requested to do.

I met Terry Frost at his eightieth birthday party and found myself sitting opposite him. I said I would love to paint you. Six years later he was back and I did! With Colin Middleton, Stuart, Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley and Cook, there’s a presence in them. The theatre
coming out in me and them. It’s all about paint though Brian. In portraits I’m still trying to push my experience of paint.

BMcA: How do you approach doing a portrait? How concerned are you with getting a likeness?
NS: I have an image of the person I’m aiming to get, but not at the expense of the paint. If it’s not exciting for me, how can it be exciting for the observer? I weight it all towards the activity, the line that’s in it, the thick areas of paint and impasto, the throwing of turps to give the chance element of the washes. I give paint the opportunity to do something for me (Fig 6). I am responsible for going a certain way but I do allow the paint to go an extra mile for me. Fortunately the people I paint are such definite characters — I paint a lot of people with beards—though for every ten male portraits there is only one female! It has to be a strong enough image to get a reaction from me.

I once painted Stephen Rea as Oscar Wilde (Fig 5). Rea’s such a skinny guy from Belfast. How was he going to play Oscar? He was at the Lyric Theatre and was magnificent. Two and a half hours on stage. He had on about ten layers of clothing. At the beginning he’s ‘heavy’ with the cape and astrakhan coat and so forth. As each scene changed he peeled off a layer of costume. At one point he was wearing a purple velvet suit with orange cravat, green carnation and smoking a black Russian cigarette . He got into a particular gesture. It was as if my head was a camera—as if I had already done the portrait. The great thing about living here is that if you don’t know someone, you know someone who does. It turned out that Davie Hammond knew him, got him to the bar after the show, and so he sat for me. Although the image in my head was so strong, I’ve never felt that I could do a portrait without the sitter being there. He came here, the college being closed on a Sunday. It was like having a private audience with Oscar Wilde. He was made up, with the silk stockings, slippers, the rings. He knew I wanted Oscar so he got into the persona and spoke to me as if he were Oscar. And it worked!

BMcA: You talk about ‘chance’. Do you mean, as with Jim Manley and his use of wax resist paper, that there is a chess game between you and the paint in terms of control?
NS: I use so much turps you couldn’t control how much one area bleeds into another. If you approach with absolute confidence the paint senses this and does what it’s bloody well told. If you’re not working on all your cylinders, it won’t work for you. I painted Jamshid [Mirfendersky] recently. I’d tried two or three times. This time I wanted the hat, the beard, the glasses, and the big black scarf. I felt it would be easy yet it didn’t work at all … me predicting too much what it would be like. I always start with a blank canvas—no backgrounds. Pure
theatre! They are isolated as on a stage. I start by doing the bones of a drawing, then feel my way into it. Those lines, and the activity of drawing, give me the confidence to be very much at ease, and excited about getting paint on. I’ve got the skeleton and can build up the paint. I love the activity of marks on blank white prepared canvas—a range of marks through to line, to quite heavy impasto in places where form is described…then there comes a point when the canvas is placed on the flat and I have a series of loose washes. I throw quite a lot of turps. I used to paint flat. There’s a series of photos of me doing the Francis Stuart portrait that way. My canvases have got bigger. Now I’m doing life-size – the Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley portraits are of standing figures (Fig 3 and 2). It’s fairly obvious why there is only one
session—it depends on my mood. There’s a lovely tension between me and the sitter that wouldn’t be there at other times. I like to accept that tension, that mood. I read John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley. He’s in a bar talking to a total stranger and the only thing they have in common is that they have both visited Prague. But the guy didn’t recognise Steinbeck’s Prague and vice versa. Then he thought: I visited in the morning, but if I visited in the afternoon it would be a different place. This made it clear in my mind—in a second session I’d be painting a different person.

BMcA: You started teaching full-time at the Belfast art college just before The Troubles started, and you’ve carefully avoided any reference to same for the past thirty odd years. Why?
NS: I haven’t carefully avoided anything. It’s not a conscious thing at all. My work isn’t about a place, a time. It’s all that I’ve known or been involved in, it’s the placing of marks on canvas and paper. If there was an image that I could have translated in those terms, I wouldn’t even have had to think about it. It didn’t happen. We’ve all been touched by The Troubles. Our department was destroyed by a bomb in 1972. We were lucky to get out. My car was beside the bomb—but it’s a car—so what? We’ve all shared the agonies. You’re so physically sickened by it all—but my work isn’t about that. I think I wouldn’t be true to my particular art if I forced myself to engage in it. The same is true of world problems.

I think I’ve been able to tap into the rich vein, the creative energy here. It’s been good for me. So the place has affected me, in its art. There have been three bombs here, near the studio. Windows put out, the roof even moved—you can see the cracks. This place isn’t that far away from hot spots but when I’m here I never even give it a thought. I keep myself quite well informed, reading, listening, watching. I have my own thoughts about
politics and religion but they are private and personal. Not part of my life here. I don’t know whether it’s a cop-out: if I could have responded I would have, but it just didn’t happen.

Brian McAvera is a playwright, art critic and curator.