SUNDAY INDEPENDENT

Sunday April 26 2009

 

Nice and easel does it

 

Painter Trevor Geoghegan and gallery owner Suzanne Macdougald have turned mutual professional respect into enduring friendship, writes Emily Hourican

 

WHEN the artist Trevor Geoghegan arrived in Ireland in 1971, after graduating from the Chelsea School of Art, he intended to visit Kerry and the islands, spend some time in Blessington, the village his father had emigrated from years before, then return to life in London. Thirty-eight years later, he's still here, a painter intimately connected with the fast-changing landscapes of rural Ireland.

 

"There was no conscious decision," he says of the move. "In fact, I was going back every week, every month, for about two years. But time moved on." This has been an intense, fulfilled relationship with a country he truly discovered as an adult, and has consistently represented with insight and affection. "Ireland felt incredibly comfortable," he says now. "It's a cliché, but it was like putting on an old glove, like coming home."

 

Trevor's light-filled, super-realist work is included in every major collection in the country, and can be seen in State offices, AIB, Goodbody Stockbrokers and the Smurfit Kappa Group, as well as in private collections such as those of Loretta Glucksman and Gabriel Byrne. Integral to the success of his story as an artist was his meeting, in 1982, with Suzanne Macdougald at the Solomon Gallery. This is a professional relationship that has endured through 27 years and more than 14 exhibitions, with all the warmth of a solid personal friendship. It even weathered Trevor's first exhibition at the gallery, one that Suzanne recalls, with considerable merriment, as "so dark I thought I'd commit suicide!"

 

"I've never forgotten it. Artists go through various stages in their lives, and sometimes they're not happy bunnies. Trevor used to specialise in painting the landscape of Ireland -- fabulous paintings, invariably quite large. This was Wicklow bogland, and he'd painted them on a very dark day. There was brooding cloud, black skies, waving sedge, and I remember sitting with the show and thinking, 'God, I'm getting more and more depressed.' It was a beautiful show, but the palette was quite dark. We joke about it now, but it was very depressing, wasn't it?"

 

That show was nearly 10 years after the move to Blessington, but Trevor was still struggling with the reality of relocation, which had meant cutting himself off from the old familiar ways, creatively as well as personally.

 

"I was going through a very dark period," he agrees now. "Even though I'd met my wife, Helen, who I'd known when she was about 14, from visits back to the family, I was very lonely in some ways, because I was totally a fish out of water. I'd severed all ties with England and friends, and taken to my new family. I'd taken a big leap -- for a long time I didn't contact any of them, God knows why, but I was trying to make my way. Also, the fact that I was a totally abstract painter who felt the pull of doing something else, something figurative, and it meant totally retraining."

 

From that muted start, Trevor and Suzanne have evolved an effective modus operandi, based on respect and trust, as well as the occasional dose of healthy criticism; "very often when you're very close to something, you can't see it," says Suzanne, who considers it a vital part of her role to point out sometimes awkward realities. "Some artists can't take it. They can be precious, difficult and overly sensitive. Trevor's not like that. He's not in any sense an egotist. I don't have to babysit him at all.

 

"I'd consider myself someone who can always learn," he concurs. "Sometimes when you're very close to something, you need a fresh eye; there comes a point where you can't see the wood for the trees. Suzanne is someone who is able to point things out to me;" including one occasion when she packed him off to Tuscany before an exhibition, saying "if I see another rock or bit of bog, I'll go mad!" It was tough love, but the results delighted them both. So have they ever fallen out? "We've never had words," says Suzanne. "Looks maybe ... " Trevor chips in. "The better the working relationship between artist and gallerist, the better everything is," Suzanne elaborates. "It makes sense. Any successful artist is always associated with a good gallery." And that association is far from a simple commercial transaction, important though that obviously is. "Being a painter is a very lonely life," says Suzanne. "They're in their studio, doing their work, it's a very isolated existence. Then they have to suddenly put all the work out there for the world to see. It requires a lot of confidence."

 

"With a solo show, you're standing there with no clothes on," agrees Trevor. A good gallerist can mediate that, acting as a buffer between artist and public, taking some of the heat out of the exposure.

 

When Suzanne closed the Solomon Gallery late last year, and launched Solomon Fine Art to host exhibitions at the Merrion hotel and other venues -- a move many considered a canny prediction of the recession, but which she insists was just "luck" -- Trevor was one of very few artists she chose to retain. "I kept on about 20 per cent of the artists; it was down to personal choice really, I wanted to keep my favourite people."

 

Like any grown-up relationship, the things they appreciate most about each other are the sometimes unromantic ones. Like reliability, commitment, professionalism. Solid, dependable virtues, enduring rather than exciting. "If Trevor says he's going to deliver, he delivers, bang on time, with all the details attached," says Suzanne. "And there's no fear, coming up to the date of an exhibition, that he won't deliver, or that the work will be wet, unframed, unsigned. Believe me, it has happened, but never with Trevor."

 

Asked what he appreciates most about Suzanne, Trevor responds: "Steadfastness and continuity. For an artist, to know that your gallery is there and that they're behind you, that if opportunities come up, they'll include you."

 

Perhaps the biggest gamble of their long friendship came when Trevor asked to paint a portrait of Suzanne, to be shown at the exhibition along with beautiful still lifes, landscapes and interiors. For her, this meant submitting to the gaze of an outsider, and one trained to see deeply. That's a tough call, given that most of us stop actually seeing ourselves early on in life; we're content with a surface-skimming once-over rather than a critical appraisal. To be shown yourself as someone else sees you is nerve-wracking, but also, says Suzanne, "flattering. I was greatly touched and honoured that he would even think about painting me. Even at the first sitting, and Trevor opened the door and said, 'Get 'em off ... !'" And is she happy with the results? "I'm very happy. It's very weird, really looking at yourself. I've never had that experience. We don't look at ourselves like that, and its very strange to see yourself as someone else does, but yes, I'm pleased." As a test of friendship, could any be harder than that? Those 27 years have clearly been well spent.

 

An Everyday Beauty, Trevor Geoghegan, The Merrion Hotel, April 30-May 3. For more info, visit www.solomonfineart.ie

 

- Emily Hourican