All true art comes from what you know, rather than what you see and think you know, Eamon Colman tells Brian McAvera
Brian McAvera: Eamon, your father was the well-known artist Seamus O’Colmain, who was part of a group of artists that you grew up with – people like Arthur Armstrong, George Campbell, Gerry Dillon and Nano Reid. How difficult was it to become an artist when you were growing up in the shadow of your father? How would you describe the linkages and differences, in terms of art, between the two of you? And did that primarily Northern group of artists (you also having a Northern grandfather) have any noticeable influence on you?
Eamon Colman: Two things happened very closely. One was that my youthful creative energy turned to gardening and landscape architecture. I wanted to design gardens and be involved with garden architecture but the reality was that I found it too client-based. There was no room for me to let my imagination go, so I started to make drawings again. Looking back, it was probably inevitable, as I was growing up within that particular milieu of contemporary Irish art. They were probably the only artists in the country who were ‘avant-garde’ and looking to recent European art.
