"Stilled Life Fragments"

[Reproduced from an article by John Keating published in the 'Social & Personal' magazine, March 2002]

"Co Tipperary born artist John Keating writes a picture about his life as an artist. His exhibition, Stilled Life Fragments is opening on 21st March in the Vanguard Gallery in Cork, just 25 years and 25 yards away from his first solo exhibition in Cork.

Forty years ago my mother brought me up on the train from Clonmel to Dublin to receive a prize in the then called Caltex exhibition. If my memory is accurate I think the 'masterpiece' was a very quirky Teddy Bears' Picnic and the prize toy racing cars. I often wonder was it that day, that sense of achievement that set me - for better or for worse - on the course of becoming an artist, and depending on the day and the mood, the feeling fluctuates between the former and the latter. Anyway from that time I annexed a part of my father's workshop for my studio. He on one side making beautiful wooden furniture, me on the other imagining myself to be this week Gaugin, the next, Michelangelo. The pot bellied stove heating the place and the rain beating on the corrugated roof - all fuelling a boyhood romantic notion of life as an artist.

So in a straight line I went there to Crawford College of Art in Cork and had my first solo exhibition in that city twenty five years ago - my father made all the frames! This coincided with getting a teaching job in Bothar Bui, in Co. Cork even doing my 'Sistine Chapel' mural on the Baptism of Christ in the church in Kiskeam while I was there. I lived in a big old house, remotely situated, and continued to dream about being a full time artist whilst my father was thrilled by my hav ing obtained the 'security' of a proverbial 'permanent pensionable post' bringing me out for a pint to celebrate.

When I was there I went for the Summer to New York for the first time. I thought that city was incredible: the museums, the galleries, the artshops, W.R.L.J., the open air concerts, the buzz! And I saw The Art Student League on 58th street. The energy in this big atelier, the alma mater of many leading American artists, was incredible: big studios packed with easels, everybody painting under different 'masters' who they has chosen to study under, leading artists who I had only before this read about and seen their works in books. So I came back to Clonmel telling my father I had to find a way of getting back there, I wanted to study in the Art Students League. It is an example of the typical generosity of my father that he said he wanted me to have his savings, which of course I didn't take. Instead I went to Trinity College to study the History of Art and took up a new teaching post in Dublin. It is an irony that a couple of weeks after my father's death, I received a letter from the Art Students League telling me I had been awarded a painting scholarship. Back in New York I remember standing at the window of my apartment in the Bronx, a screeching police siren howling and an investigation underway in the park opposite into some altercation, smiling to myself at a generous headline that had been written about me in a newspaper saying 'greatness awaits John Keating in New York' and thinking if this is greatness they can keep it!

But it was a really exciting time. Whitney openings, looking over my shoulder and there's Al Pacino. Even going to an Andy Warhol Party. I learnt a lot. Probably the most important lesson being: the journey in painting is everything, not the destination. This was learnt by dint of having to paint over the week's work at the end of the week, reprime the canvas so that a tabula rasa was ready for Monday for the new week of painting.

I still miss Carny's pub, the Friday nights, the giant pizzas, pitchers of beer and the heated arguments as to the merits and demerits of figuration, abstraction, minimalism etc etc. I even miss sometimes the solitary journey back to the Bronx on the d-line in the early hours of the morning. I'd say the next momentous event (notwithstanding my marriage in the meantime to Miriam) was being selected by an international jury to exhibit at the Prix International d'Art Contemporain de Monte Carlo to receive an award. The year was 1987. Life is full of seemingly chance decisions that change the course of things. Helped by Aer Lingus with flights to attend the opening dinner, it was suggested that I fly into Paris and home via Milan. So on my way back I called into the gallery in Milan which now handles my work "Compagnia del Disegno". I had my first so exhibition with them in 1991, the same year that my twin daughter Ruth and Rebecca were born. I have continued to exhibit with the gallery in solo shows, group exhibitions and museum shows. I have been lucky in the course of my life as an artist to have met wonderful people on that journey, people who have given me the necessary support to continue to get up every morning to go to my studio to paint, The motto for my working life is taken from the Art Students League 'nulla dies, sine linea. Never a day without a line'.

This year my work is being introduced to Paris in an exhibition entitled 'The Nude' and I celebrate 25 years since my first solo exhibition in Cork by returning there for an exhibition entitled 'Stilled Life Fragments' at the Vanguard Gallery, Cork.

'Stilled Life Fragments' an exhibition by John Keating is on show at The Vanguard Gallery, Carey's Lane, Cork from Thursday 21 st March - Tuesday 16th April 2002.

John Keating's work may be seen at www.ArtVitae.com and www.compagniadeldisegno.com".