Untitled Document

Although John Breakey (b. 1932) has been making art for as long as he can remember and although he has always sold steadily, you will not find him – or many others that I can think of – in any of the art histories of the past fifty years. He doesn't fit into fashionable trends; he lives in the country, and for a long time he exhibited only in group exhibitions (Fig 1). Add to that the fact that he has spent over a decade out of the country, and that much of his work is bought by universities and private collectors in England, Ireland and Canada, and you realise why he is one of the unsung petit maitres of Irish art. For much of his life he divided his time between lithography and painting, although he started off making constructive art after he left the Slade. He owns, so far as I know, the only private lithographic studio in the country, and unlike so many artists who produce lithographs using the services of a master printer, John himself is his own master printer. He is a remarkable printmaker, with a distinctly French attitude to striking colour. These days he restricts himself largely to painting in which early American abstract expressionist influences have given sway to a post-impressionist delight in a form of abstracted figuration. Landscape is his abiding theme. He has a particular admiration for Munch, Nolde and Ensor which, in view of the heightened, luxurious and sunny colour of his work, is initially surprising. One is more inclined to think of Bonnard, Vuillard, early Derain or even Maurice Denis until one realises that the former group are all expressionists, and that it is that expressive element, which he also found in the American Abstract Expressionists, which he has developed, but without the angst.

Brian McAvera: John, you studied at Belfast College of Art from 1953-58, and then at the Slade School of Art in London from 1958-60 which was when Lucian Freud was teaching there. Can you give us a portrait of these two periods, detailing your contemporaries there, the contrasts between Belfast and London, and the imprints – if any – that each has left on your work.
John Breakey: Going to the Belfast College of Art was a wonderful experience as my parents were absolutely against it! I had wanted to go to art college when I left school at sixteen but I was put into the linen business as an apprentice. Then, when I became twenty-one, my parents gave way and I went to college. It was the first time that I found myself in a wonderful Catholic/Protestant mix, and I was also amazed that the majority of the staff were English. But the two lecturers who had the most abiding influence on me were Irish – Romeo Togood and Tom Carr.

My closest friends at the time were David Crone and the sculptor Bob Sloan, both of whom were a year under me. Basil Blackshaw and Terence Flanagan, both of whom were two years ahead of me, I knew fairly well. When I look back, I'm amazed at how few serious artists came out of the college.

When I arrived there they asked me what I wanted to do. I replied 'Learn to paint'. But they said that I had to have a craft, so, after hearing about all of the crafts on offer, I picked lithography as I was told that it was the nearest thing to painting. Unfortunately the litho teacher had done his diploma with the aid of a technician, and therefore knew little about the actual printing process. The whole class was floundering in the dark. So I gate-crashed the commercial printing class and found out how it was done from them; and from the Belfast Public Library!

Arriving at the Slade, however, was absolutely fantastic. It was the freedom of being able to do your own thing; of deciding when you wanted to do Life drawing; when you wanted to work on the landing, painting your own ideas; or when you wanted to turn those ideas into lithographs in the litho room. I was helped by Tom Carr who had sent a nice letter to Professor William Coldstream, the principal, who, at the end of the interview, asked me if there was anything that I wanted to ask. As I thought I might not get in, I asked if I could see around the place, so Coldstream actually stopped the interviews of those who were to come after me, and took me around the college himself!

I shared an apartment with John Salt and he took me to the Royal College on Sundays where we would go into the common room, and talk about art. I was taken to a studio, that of Peter Phillips I think, and saw work that seemed to go against everything that was happening: I was looking at the start of Pop Art. Hockney was there, along with quite a few of the Pop artists who were shortly to emerge. When Hockney came down from the Midlands, apparently in a farmer's type suit, he transformed himself, becoming blond and changing his style of clothes.
The one important tutor in the Slade though was Ceri Richards, who was involved with the teaching of lithography, and who greeted me each morning with 'Well now, how's the Irish today!' I think we were the only two Celts there at the time. Then, I was one of those singled out for an interview with Victor Pasmore, who was a visiting lecturer. He looked at our work. Mine was halfway between abstraction and realism. He told me that I should go one way or the other. I still haven't!

I have noticed that in Irish art, the number of artists who have chosen the same path is rather numerous: McSweeney, Crozier, le Brocquy and so forth. Freud was at the college but every time I passed him in the corridor, he seemed to push himself into the wall, as if he didn't want to be there. Henry Moore was always around, but just as a passing figure. However, the American Expressionists had just hit London, and I was bowled over by them.

B McA: You had two one-man exhibitions in Belfast in 1962 (in Studio 25 and The Octagon), presumably shortly after your return from London, and then you seem to have vanished until 1984 when you pop up again at Grant Fine Art in Newcastle, Co Down. What happened to you in the meantime?
J B: I was living in London for ten years, from about 1964, when I moved back there, until 1974. I had shown in the first exhibition of Group '63, along with Crone, Pakenham, Bennett and Noel Millar, in the Magee Gallery with Nelson Bell running the show. Colin Middleton turned up at the opening and talked one of his clients into buying a work of mine. I left because I thought I would do better in London: but I didn't. I was working all the time, and produced a large body of work, much of which I later destroyed. When I was in London, I did the odd exhibition in Ireland, usually with Group '63, who also showed in the Government of Northern Ireland office in Bond Street, but the Troubles had just started and they closed the exhibition after one day! When I came back to Northern Ireland I had a show in The Octagon and the Ulster Museum bought one of my Perspex constructions.

B McA: I know that you were a friend of Colin Middleton, about whom many stories have been told. How did the association start, and how useful to you was he, as an artist?
J B: I knew Colin vaguely but when I had a show in Studio 25, he came to the opening, and pointed to a construction that I had made and shown in Irish Living Art. He said 'I want that. Bring it to my studio and you can have anything you want.' I brought it, but I didn't have the nerve to ask for a work in return. However, we started to go out at weekends for a drink, me, him, and his wife. One evening, when calling up, I discovered that my construction had the place of honour above the mantelpiece. It had large hooks and nails on it. I said to Kitty, his wife, that I felt honoured that he had hung it there. She said, 'Yes, it's very good. I can hang the children's socks on it, to dry!' For her there was only one artist and that was Colin. He came down and gave me a large painting called Kay at the Piano. I was fascinated by the way in which he worked. He was quite happy to talk about his techniques and about his relationship with the dealer Victor Waddington. When Victor was supplying him with canvases and paint, the paint was quite thick, but when the relationship broke up, Colin's paint became a lot thinner! His very thorough preparation was of interest to me. He used gesso to prepare the boards he worked on, and was very interested in varnishes.

B McA: You don't appear in either Art in Ulster 2, or Thinking Long, and like many artists I know, you are not in any of the standard histories of Irish art, despite working and selling for more than fifty-five years. Why do you think that this is so?
J B: I suppose it's because I didn't exhibit that much! I had to reinvent myself when I came back to the North, and it took a while to produce a body of work to exhibit. I have regularly exhibited in the RUA, Irish Living Art and the RHA.

B McA: You are the only artist I know who has his own lithographic workshop. How did this come about?
J B: I was contacted by John Middleton, Colin's son, and asked if I would help set up a print workshop in Belfast. John had studied graphics at the Royal College, especially etching and lithography, and I was the only lithographer about. So we did. Bob Sloan joined our committee, and then Brian Ferran from the Arts Council. Then Tom Caldwell offered us a basement in the end house of Bradbury Place, which he owned. It wasn't overly suitable in respect of drainage so we started looking for another place. Then the Arts Council made us the offer of taking the whole thing over, but without any of us having any input into the running of it. The Arts Council wanted complete control over expenditure.

So this became the print workshop, set up in the Arts Council premises in Riddell Hall, and which is now in Waring Street. As we needed money for equipment, we organised an auction of artists' work with Solly Lipchitz as the auctioneer. It took place in the Caldwell Gallery, and the money raised bought us a litho press. That press arrived in Riddell Hall. Barker (from the art college) was asked to come and set it up, but he was an etcher and he didn't know how to do it. The press, an offset one, then disappeared from the workshop.

Because the print workshop was taken over, I built my own workshop. I restored a stables at the bottom of my garden, put in electricity and water, and managed to buy – with great difficulty and humour – the press that I had learnt on in Belfast Art College! There was a man in Newcastle who fixed engines so I asked him to collect it from the college – after he had taken it apart, that is. He did so, and asked me if I wanted it reassembled, which he did the following morning. It's the best press in Ireland. Most of them have small beds, unlike this one. It's bigger and better than the current one in the print workshop in Waring Street.

B McA: You visited two key areas for lithogaphy: Paris in 1986 where you saw Auguste Clot, amongst others; and the Tamarind Institute in New Mexico in 1990. Whom did you meet and work with, and which kind of lithography did you prefer?
J B: Both of these were wonderful experiences, but entirely different! At Auguste Clot's workshop I met the master printer who had printed for Picasso. There was even a black and white Picasso print in the draining sink, marked 'To be Destroyed', as it was sub-standard. The printmaker gave me ideas as to how they processed a litho stone. That was invaluable for me, and entirely different from the Tamarind method. In another French workshop I came across a pile of litho stones, and as I was always on the outlook for stones, I asked about them. They told me that they were keeping them for the Louvre as there were images by Goya, amongst others, on the stones!

At Tamarind, I was on a demanding course where the emphasis, in relation to everything, seemed to be: how fast can you do it? It didn't have equipment of the Paris type. The Paris presses were able to produce prints automatically, whereas at Tamarind, each one was printed separately. I was amazed at the way in which they broke down the printing process, and the drying process. It was obviously directed more to encourage printmakers, as opposed to artist-printmakers.

There were two areas in the print workshop, one where people learnt the craft, and one where the artists' editions were made. In the teaching area, you were given a pile of activities which had to be carried out, so you never really saw what anyone else did. On the first night there, I was met by the director who took me to her house, so I was able to see the work of the workshop on her walls. Oddly enough, I learnt more from my one day's visit to Auguste Clot. It was there that I got the techniques that I have been using ever since.

B McA: Tell us about your approach to lithography, and how it evolved.
J B: At Belfast College of Art, everything was trial and error. Going to the Slade was much more informative as I had Stanley Jones, a professional artist and printer, to instruct me as well as Ceri Richards to guide me on the aesthetic side. But I really learnt when I started my own printing press: dealing with different qualities of ink, organising paper and so forth. I find that lithography is an extension of my painting.

I did have the privilege of printing for Neil Shawcross and David Crone at the same time, and that was difficult! Today, I feel that an artist can come to a lithographer with nearly any technique that he may have, and that he should be able to express himself on the stone. He doesn't need to adapt that much to lithography. In most cases, lithography can adapt to the artist.

If you print for someone else, you have to understand their way of working. For myself, my process is grinding all of my seven big stones, lining them up, then having a basic tracing of an idea that I want to do. I trace that down onto each stone, naming each stone as a colour – red, blue and so forth. Then I go down the line of stones, adding work to each stone until I feel that they will all act together as one multi-coloured unit. After etching the stones, and making sure that each stone will print properly and removing unnecessary marks, I take trial proofs of each stone, say up to about twelve trial prints, each one in a slightly different colour. From that I work out what the final arrangement of the colours will be. Then it's a case of editioning, usually trying to produce about fifty prints, of which the aim is to acquire about forty or more perfect ones.

The image should never be dead, but rather have a life of its own (Figs 8&10). Lithography should have colour planes which seem to separate, some recessing, some being in the middle, and some jumping out at you. The quality of the texture is terribly important.

B McA: How influential for you were the New York School of the 1950 and 1960s – artists like Pollock, Rauschenberg, Gottlieb and de Kooning?
J B: Wasn't it Kline who did those large, black gestural works? – and Robert Motherwell. They were very important. It's the dynamics of shape. Scale! I tend to produce large lithographs. I'll quote you from Ceri Richards. 'The difference between European and American painting is that European work has a heaviness whereas American work tends to nearly float. Rothko's floating veils for example. Often, when I draw the image it can float, as I leave huge areas of paper around it.

For me, at the present moment, the American way is fading, and the European way is coming to the fore. People of my age shouldn't be thinking of the works of other people, but of their own work!

B McA: Both as a painter and as a lithographer, your grand theme is landscape, and when I think of you, it's not within a specifically Irish tradition but, rather like Brian Bourke, within a European one, and specifically a Post-Impressionist one. You once said that you had 'no desire to illustrate landscape', so what do you try to do?
J B: I try to take out what moves me in the landscape (Figs 2, 3&4). Not to make a copy of it. It's the emotional feeling that you have from looking at and considering the landscape, rather than it being a photographic approach. It's the emotional content that you find in Nolde, Munch and Ensor. These are important names to me, even if, oddly enough, those artists tended to deal with people. I also love Jack B Yeats' way of working. He deals very well with colour and space.

I've never thought of landscape as being an Irish theme: rather it is something that I have had to deal with and am happiest in dealing with. The artist is the figure in the landscape who doesn't appear.

B McA: Particularly in the big oils, there's a very strong cusp between abstraction and figuration and, like the work of Clement McAleer, a horizontal 'banding' in the painting. You find the same thing in artists like Bonnard. Are you conscious of these tendencies?
J B: And it's also in Middleton! Most of the Protestant painters in Northern Ireland, in the past, were also involved with textile design and in dealing with design – the warp and the weft, the horizontal and the vertical – seem to have grown into their paintings as in Middleton, McAleer, and Paul Henry. But for me, it was the American Expressionists with their horizontals and verticals that I would trace it back to, despite the fact that I was a frequent visitor to the design office in the linen business! I always remember the struggle of Mondrian who was trying to break things into the horizontal and the vertical yet it's wonderful to look at the early work where he had diagonals! Same thing with Kandinsky.

B McA: You are a striking colourist, somewhere between the great Post-Impressionists, and the American Abstractionists of the New York School. Does colour determine the structure of the paintings?
J B: If one looks at the early work of van Gogh, it's painted in tertiary colours, and when he produced his last pictures, they were full of primary colour. When I returned to painting, in Newcastle, [in the mid 1980s] I tended to paint in darker colours, and now I am moving to much lighter colours, as handling bright colour is really quite difficult to do in terms of making a painting work. Stanley Spencer said to his father that ninety per cent of working out a painting is done in the head, and ten per cent is working on the painting. My own work is planned in the head as a visual image where I can shift things around. I try to put that down on paper, or on a support. It's then that I find that certain things that I planned don't work, so I make a change so the painting does evolve. The broad use of colour is planned out in advance. I think, like Mondrian, of cutting down the colours I use, which now are red, ultramarine and cerulean blue, green, and orange.

B McA: Living at the foot of the Mournes with its conjunction of mountain and sea seems to have released in you an accumulation of observations about landscape, seascape and cloudscape; observations which oscillate between the 'big picture', and a fixing on the specific detail of gorse, field, stone wall or running water. How important was, and is, the Mournes to your work?
J B: Terribly important. The first picture I showed you, Mourne Road (Fig 6), was done immediately after I finished at the Slade. I realised subconsciously the elements that I could use, and felt happy with the district, so I was delighted to return again to the Mournes from London. I spend an awful lot of time looking and observing the structure of the landscape, rather than going out sketching. I do make drawings, but I observe more.
The images come to me, from where I do not know, but they are manipulated and changed in my head before I start a painting. I used to make drawings, up at White Park Bay. When I came to Colin Middleton with them, he yelled 'Snap', and ran upstairs, coming down with a series of drawings that he had done. He said that at certain times there were images in the air, and we were both producing the same kind of image, only in different places.
Being here, I have got the sea and a constant changing seascape. In one of my lithographs I used the title Tomorrow is Different (Fig 11). The landscape in the Mournes is different every time I look at it, so I try to put down some of the differences. For me, I have broken the landscape down into the elements of sea, stones and stone walls, gorse, flowing water and the curvature of the hills and mountains. These I move and change. I remember being in Donegal and I said 'Lovely strong light' and a friend replied 'No, you only want to see Donegal in grey!', and I thought 'Pity!' Light is important but so also are the huge shadows and the dark areas. I think that the images of the landscape that I see are what I can handle, deal with, and express but the images don't have to be what is there.

B McA: So that's your connection to Munch, Ensor and Redon?
J B: Yes. I used to wonder why people painted a horse in blue until I realised that colour is a means of expressing one's emotion.