‘I like painting with a gun to my head,· Nick Miller tells Brian McAvera about techniques he’s adopted in order to capture immediacy in his art
Brian McAvera: Take us through the process of making a work from inception to completion.
Nick Miller: I suppose my portrait of Barrie Cooke which won the Hennessy award is a good example (Fig 9). I’d known Barrie for a long time and I’ve painted him three times since 1997. By 2013, he was no longer able to live alone, and wasn’t in great shape leaving his Sligo studio after 27 years to be near one of his daughters. I rang to see if he would be fit to sit for me. He came on his last day in Sligo. It was poignant, as we both knew there was a finality to it, on many levels. But he perked up being in the studio, and we joked as I painted very quickly. I filmed bits of it, for my own interest, and recently noticed the actual painting took just 45 minutes. It is charged by his being there, by our history, by the human situation. But the bottom line is that, that is not what I focus on, it is just part of the stimulation that charges the encounter, as I try and hold in paint what I can of his presence.
Overcoming the slow down at home, Irish architects Heneghan Peng, Grafton Architects, O’Donnell+Tuomey amongst others have looked to international competitions, but overseas projects are not without risk, writes John McLaughlin
In addition to creating a likeness of her daughter, Geraldine O’Neill has in mind the age-old interrogation of representation, writes Robert Ballagh of this year’s recipient of the Ireland-U.S. Council/Irish Arts Review Portraiture Award
James Watson could trace his family’s artistic lineage to York Minster and following his move to Cork he launched a new tradition to last a hundred years, writes Vera Ryan.