Me

I attended the Harrow School of Art in London in the mid 70’s when the whole Punk rock thing was happening and this has had a huge impact on how I paint.  The Clash were, and continue to be, an enormous influence on me.  Joe Strummer’s words and music were a breath of fresh air to those of us attempting to make sense of London, a city with rubbish spilling across the streets, football violence, the Notting Hill riots, strikes and a general sense of discontent.  Of course, we then got Thatcher ‘the Milk Snatcher’.  The Clash galvanised a disillusioned youth and gave us a voice and a presence.

After finishing Art School and finding that painting was not going to make me a living, I worked in the aviation industry at Heathrow for British Airways.  I married a New Zealander, emigrated here, had kids and to cut a long story short, hardly knew one end of a paint brush from the other. 

Then my father died back in Ireland last August. During the time I spent with him, after the tests and the operations and before his death, he inspired me to paint again.  So it was with enormous trepidation and a sense of returning to something I had lost, that I picked up my brush last September. The paintings I began producing were unlike any of my previous work ….

My paintings

Songs always have two elements – music plus lyrics/poetry  - while painting usually consists of the purely visual.  What I try to do is marry the visual with the poetic, using Brian Flaherty’s words to create “songs on canvas”. 

Brian lives in Auckland with his wife and three children.  He is Associate University Librarian (Digital Services) at the University of Auckland, co-editor of Trout, the online poetry magazine, and web developer for the New Zealand Electronic Poetry Centre (nzepc). His poems have appeared in web journals Turbine, Evasion, Blackmail Press and Trout, and in anthologies including Best NZ Poems 2006

Also, he’s my brother-in-law.  His poems have an ‘edgy’ quality that I particularly like, a quality that I hope complements the visual element on the canvas.  Brian’s job allows him to travel the globe, notebook and camera in hand, something which is reflected in his work and provides me with some pretty inspirational material.
 
When I look at a painting, listen to some music, or read a book I don’t need, or want, somebody to analyse it for me – I either like it or I don’t.  As a result I haven’t included deep and meaningful explanations of the paintings here.  You’ll either like them or you won’t – I hope it’s the former.