INSIDE STORY: No Laughing Matter

REMBRANDT Virginia artist has self portrait displayed in Rijksmuseum

For a man devoted to a very traditional style of painting, Eoin McEvoy has taken a very unconventional approach to learning his craft. A Fine Arts course was not for the Virginia man; instead he contacted his artistic hero and bunked in his Norwegian cellar for two years picking up what techniques he could through an apprenticeship before setting off on his own artistic path.

The curious approach has paid dividends as one of Eoin's artworks currently adorns the walls of Amsterdam's famed Rijksmuseum.

Eoin's visage emerges from a shroud of darkness. He's wearing an earthy red cap and a loose fitting gown, which could pass for the 17th century garb the Dutch master himself may have wore in his final poverty stricken days. Unusually for a self portrait, the subject's laughing. Is Eoin laughing at himself - to have the audacity to think he might get this painting hung in the Rijksmuseum? Or at the viewer, for having been japed into questioning whether this is actually a work from 350 years ago? Or is he simply showcasing his considerable skill set? Or at the arts schools where he felt his passion for figurative art was stymied?

That Eoin's portrayed himself in the self portrait, but dressed in costume has a nice resonance with the work of Rembrandt. In his early 20s Rembrandt painted himself dressed up as a soldier, and laughing. Eoin's a self-confessed Rembrandt obsessive - a passion that saw him travel to Amsterdam.

"I met with Rembrandt experts - I was interested in the technique, and methods and how he used his paint. There's always this thing about what did Rembrandt use to get the quality of the oil paint to do what he wanted to do.

"It's actually quite simple: it's the lead paint, it gives it weight," he says adding that for the sake of his health he opts out on that technique. Eoin also recalls visiting the Rijksmuseum in 2015, to take in an exhibition of the great man's work.

"I couldn't have imagined at the time that I'd ever show there. It's an impossible thing. You don't. It doesn't happen."

He's not overstating the point; this is the first time in the 221 year history of the Rijksmuseum, that they have displayed the work of an Irish figurative artist. The opportunity arose as the Dutch designated 2019 as 'The Year of Rembrandt' to mark the 350 year anniversary of his death, and put out a call to artists inspired by him.

"I think they had 8,500 entries or something and they chose about 500 in the end to show. It's an incredible thing," he says of the honour of making the final cut.

"Eoin's homage to Rembrandt is obviously an accomplished work. That he resisted working from photographs - "I always work from life" - whilst maintaining a laughing pose is doubly impressive.

"Self portraits are very difficult because psychologically staring at yourself all day long... That painting, I think I spent three years working on it or something."

That he would go off and seek advice from Rembrandt experts is quintessential McEvoy when you reflect on his career trajectory. He embarked on his arts path as a student in Sligo IT on a Fine Arts course hoping to learn how the greats, like Rembrandt perfected their craft.

"I was under the impression, because I love the old masters and classical painting, that was something I could continue to do. And unfortunately it's frowned upon in art schools today, which I understand. There's the whole thing about Zeitgeist, you should work within your time.

"That's already been done so why would you do it again?"

He struggled with the priority placed on conceptual art and installations.

"After a year I thought it's not for me. I'm facing a lot of opposition for what I want to do which is classical painting, so it was the wrong place to be."

He took time out after Sligo, mulled over his options. A couple of years later he tried again, this time at IADT in Dun Laoghaire.

"Maybe I could mould myself around what they want to teach? Maybe I'm more malleable as a painter now," he laughs as he looks back on it now. He lasted five weeks."

"I just said - they don't want me to paint in a figurative style, they don't want me to paint in a classical way so I know this isn't for me, I don't want to do four years of fighting against people that don't want me to paint the way I paint, so I should just leave."

It was soon after this that he had an artistic epiphany of sorts when stumbling upon the work of Odd Nerdrum. While the Swedish born, Norwegian based artist may not have a huge profile in Ireland, he's hugely important in Scandinavia and beyond. Nerdrum is another Rembrandt disciple. Eoin says his work has been very influential on the creators of the Game of Thrones creators.

Ostensibly a traditional portrait painter, Eoin was smitten and in 2013 penned him a letter asking if he could be among the next clutch of students - typically Norwegians - who he takes in to his studio in Stravern on the south coast.

"I lived in a small room under his studio," says Eoin, as if this was the most natural thing in the world.

"He would be working on his own paintings and I'd sit there and we'd talk about philosophy, or politics or whatever. He worked from models a lot of the time, but a lot of the time he worked from his imagination, so I found it most beneficial to sit there and talk with him while he worked and just take it in.

He'd also stretch canvases, prime canvases, and, most nerve-wreckingly use grids to scale up Nerdrum's ideas from sketchbooks to the canvas. He also had his own projects to apply what he was learning in the studio. The improvement in his technique over the two years he studied in Norway is apparent in two self portraits dating from before and after. While anyone would be deeply proud of the accomplishment in the latter painting, another Rembrandt-esque self portrait, Eoin insists he's further refined his technique.

Are you born in the wrong time?

"Maybe, maybe. Odd Nerdrum would say that... he says that a lot, that he's born in the wrong time. But I don't know, I thinks it's becoming more popular now, with the internet you see for some reason classical figurative painting's coming back in a lot of places. It's a lot more accepted now.

After Norway he spent three years in Edinburgh pursuing a looser style.

"l didn't want to paint classical any more, I just wanted to break free from it - I still painted figurative stuff, I still painted portraits, but I wanted to make them more free."

While he enjoyed this experience, he feels it didn't help him improve his skill level. Paris was his next stop. He moved there in July for six months, and that was key in his development and return to what he knew.

"The light in Paris is so perfect for painting - I just wanted to capture the light. The only way I could do that I felt, was not in an impressionist way - I had to actually look at what I was seeing and paint from life to try to capture the light. So then I went back to figurative painting portraits, started to paint nudes and the figure again and interiors."

The people he paints are typically friends.

"l'm interested in people. I want to paint people that I know, people that I care about. That makes more sense to me. And the more you know someone the better you can paint them, I really think that's true."

He bundled up what he learned from Paris and took it to London, where he now lives.

"I tried to take on London in that way but the light's so different, it's harsher, it's a bit more gloomy. It's grim. London's a kind of ugly place, but that can make for great painting I think."

It seems to be working for him.

"Over the past six months galleries have started to take notice," he says, explaining that his work is currently in four exhibitions in London; and then of course there's his piece in the Rijksmuseum which he counts as his greatest achievement to date.

Since it is an homage, the Celt asks if he brought anything to the painting than simply his face?

"Yes I think you always will. In a way there's no such thing as originality... So I think no matter how closely you try to follow another painter, you're always going to have an expression of yourself in it.

"It's very hard to be original, especially now in painting. Everything's been done in a way - after Picasso, what really can you do?"

What draws him to Rembrandt?

"Rembrandt seemed to master painting in a way that he seems completely free. He's almost like an abstract painter painting in a figurative way, and a figurative painter painting in an abstract way...

"He went from painting a very slick way, almost a contrived way to painting in such a loose manner, I think it's the looseness. But it's an illusion of looseness and quickness, he spent a lot of time on his paintings. It's a bit like Lucian Freud, 500 sittings for a self portrait, but in the end it looks like he's done it in an hour. I think that's what I like most, the freeness he seems to have at the end of his life. But I can't hope for that freedom now, it's a bit naive to think that I could paint in a loose manner."

He explains that he believes that to paint freely, you must first have mastered painting in a "very precise" manner, and he believes he may have missed that particular boat.

The Celt notes it's funny how Eoin's so interested in formal painting and yet resists going through the formal techniques of learning.

"That's probably stubbornness more than anything else," he says.

He acknowledges that there are institutes which cater for students of classical figurative painting- in fact in Edinburgh, Paris, and London.

However he now feels that while he may lag behind the majority of graduates from such schools, their work can appear "too correct" and "lacking in energy".

He talks glowingly of a Catalan painter, Anthony Tàpies.

"His work, even though it's very very abstract, I find is more similar to Rembrandt, than 99% of the figurative painters working today because he has this idea of putting a spiritual element into his work. So he treats his paintings like a talisman, it's kind of like a healing object. He believes in the transfer of energy from the artist to the art object and that it can be a healing object.

"I do think that as long as you put enough spiritual energy into the work, actually I think that's what's missing in most painting today.

While he hopes to hone his skill, he suspects it's too late for him to master.

"I think I'm a beginner for sure, yeah, definitely. I know some basic things, but I have a long way to go and I think I have a lot to learn.

"And that's why I have gone back to the classical, because actually there's no way to track if you're improving or not if you are painting in an expressionistic way. You can trick yourself into thinking that you are, especially if you start to get exhibitions and people tell you 'Aw your work is great'; you might start to believe that, and that's probably the worst thing that can happen."

That's why he uses the old masters as a benchmark.

"I want to paint in my own way but I don't think there's any other way to go about that than to hold myself accountable."

What lies ahead for you?

"I have another exhibition coming up in August - a group show in London. Then after that I'd like to put together a solo show next year - that would be my plan. I don't know where I'm going to show yet but I have enough for a solo show; I think I need maybe five or six more paintings, and I'll be ready for a solo show next year."