Don’t forget to click play above to listen to the full podcast interview.
Salvatore of Lucan says he’s always worked hard to not be overly influenced by anyone except himself.
Standing in the Crawford Art Gallery in an unseasonably warm three-quarter-length bright orange puffer jacket, he seems vaguely uncomfortable being interviewed in front of his painting, so eventually, we move to a quiet corner. You can hear the full interview above.
Three is the magic number
The artist’s recently announced win at the Zurich Portrait Prize means €15,000 in cash and a commission worth €5,000 to create a work for inclusion in the National Portrait Collection at the National Gallery of Ireland.
But this is his third time being shortlisted for the prize; in 2018, Me and My Dad in MacDonalds, which depicts his first meeting with his father, was selected. The following year, Lucy With Three Hands and Me Holding Onto Her Leg came in Highly Commended.
True to his intention to “make something beautiful,” this year’s prize-winner is arguably more peaceful, more filled with light and less angst-ridden than the previous submissions.
As ever, there are many paintings worth seeing in the Zurich Portrait Prize and its accompanying Young Portrait Prize this year.
Salvatore of Lucan is not straying from his subject matter in his depiction of his mother and himself at home, but there’s a notable trend in the portraits on show this time out towards the domestic and the familiar.
Keeping it in the family: Lockdown art to the fore
The current Zurich Portrait Prize went on show in the National Gallery last November and is only now making its way to Cork, so it’s last year’s show, and a lot of these paintings are from an entirely predictable wave of artists’ responses to the lockdowns of 2020.
There are many self-portraits, many depictions of isolation, and many portraits of close family members, and very little of the kind of formal portraiture that involves dignitaries sitting for artists, with the exception of Paul MacCormaic’s oil painting of historian Catherine Corless and Sarah Doyle’s photograph of Michael D Higgins on the campaign trail in 2018.
But there’s plenty there, in the shrunken worlds depicted.
Gabhann Dunne’s tender portrayal of his small son, I Love Ya Boy, is a breathless, gossamer-fine moment capturing the sense of wonder that can accompany parental love, depicting the boy against what seems like an autumnal tumult, but in the presence of familiars from the animal kingdom.
Julia Mitchell’s Knight of Kilcooley Abbey is, at once, her husband Terry having a snooze on the sofa and 16th century noble Pierce Fitz Óg Butler in repose in Kilcooley Abbey. The magical realism of it, the thinning of the veil between two worlds, one an almost unimaginable past and one a world of cozy domesticity, is transporting and mesmerising.
The two Highly Commended works, Vanessa Jones’ Cabbage Baby and Tom McLean’s Note to Self, are both self-portraits.
The Zurich Portrait Prize and the Zurich Young Portrait Prize 2021 are at the Crawford Art Gallery until July 17. Info and opening times here.
"I just wanted to make something beautiful"