Basil Blackshaw, HRHA, RUA 1932 - 2016
Irish artist, Basil Blackshaw was born in Glegormley, Co. Antrim in the North of Ireland in 1932. He studied art at the Belfast College of Art from 1948 to 1951, and in the year he graduated, he was awarded a scholarship to study in Paris.
As an artist, his paintings are distinctive for their loose, gestural style and his subtle use of colour. The subject matter of his paintings very much reflect his own background and interests and can be characterised as being inspired by the landscape and people of rural Ireland. Horses and horse racing, Irish Travellers, and greyhounds are motifs that appear frequently in his work. He was also a noted portrait painter, and his many sitters include Irish playwright, Brian Friel and Irish poets, Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley. As an artist, Basil Blackshaw constantly sought to re-invent his work, and never settled on one particular subject matter. Many of his paintings, feature motifs from his everyday surroundings, that could be seen as being mundane subjects, such as a series of minimalist paintings featuring windows, or simple objects, such as a bird cage or a pram. However, these paintings are enlivened by Blackshaw’s deft handling of paint, and expressionistic style of painting, where he often scratches lines into the still wet paint and elevates his simple subject matter into something more monumental and captivating.
As an artist, his paintings are distinctive for their loose, gestural style and his subtle use of colour. The subject matter of his paintings very much reflect his own background and interests and can be characterised as being inspired by the landscape and people of rural Ireland. Horses and horse racing, Irish Travellers, and greyhounds are motifs that appear frequently in his work. He was also a noted portrait painter, and his many sitters include Irish playwright, Brian Friel and Irish poets, Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley. As an artist, Basil Blackshaw constantly sought to re-invent his work, and never settled on one particular subject matter. Many of his paintings, feature motifs from his everyday surroundings, that could be seen as being mundane subjects, such as a series of minimalist paintings featuring windows, or simple objects, such as a bird cage or a pram. However, these paintings are enlivened by Blackshaw’s deft handling of paint, and expressionistic style of painting, where he often scratches lines into the still wet paint and elevates his simple subject matter into something more monumental and captivating.
In 1995, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, organised a major retrospective of his work. This exhibition was also shown in Dublin and Cork, before travelling throughout the United States. The Ulster Museum of Art, in Belfast, held a major exhibition of his work in 2002 and noted Irish journalist and Irish art aficionado, Eamonn Mallie, published a major book on the artist in 2003. In 2006 the Centre Culturel Irlandais in Paris held a solo exhibition of his work. The last major exhibition of his work was held in 2012 at the F.E. McWilliam Gallery in Banbridge and the Royal Hibernian Academy in Dublin, to coincide with the artist’s eightieth birthday.
Basil Blackshaw passed away in 2016, and is widely considered to be one of the most important Irish artists of the 20th century. Irish art critic, Aidan Dunne, writing in the Irish Times, on the occasion of Blackshaw’s eightieth birthday exhibition remarked that “Basil Blackshaw is one of the most highly regarded Northern Irish artists to have emerged during the 20th century, and he is also one of the most brilliant.”
