SUMMER MEMORIES/The painter Brian Bourke:'I'VE NOTHING PLANNED for my holidays this year. My son, fiddle player Malachy Bourke, has a boat on the Shannon and we'll probably take to the water, stopping to draw and paint as we wander along. I will accompany Malachi on the bodhrán. I'm good at it. My partner, painter Jay Murphy usually accompanies me – she's a really good painter – nearly as good as me.
I know the Shannon really well. I’ve spent almost 50 years exploring this waterway. I’m always casting around for interesting places to document. Journeying along the Grand Canal is peaceful and quiet. We travel from Shannon Harbour to Belmont in Co Offaly. At points along the way you’re elevated, looking down on the landscape and seeing it from a fresh perspective.
I’m the last person in the world to sit around and do nothing. My holidays are probably better described as working holidays. One of the best experiences I’ve ever had was a trip to Argentina with a band of merry men that included musicians Frankie Gavin, Máirtín O’Connor and singer Mary McPartlan. We played a week of the most splendid music in Buenos Aires. We visited tango bars and explored the pampas. It was the first time I had ever crossed the equator. I also worked with a young Frankie Gavin on some recordings in New York. I stayed in the city to work on a series of paintings called Manhattan Vertigo.
The picture of me with the bird on my head was taken in Barcelona. We were there to pay our respects to Gaudi’s cathedral. We got lost in its surreal structure and climbed to the top.
Polyptych, my exhibition at this year's Galway Arts Festival's Fairgreen Gallery, is not a retrospective but I will be putting together groups of paintings that are related to each other. I'm also exhibiting a series of new drawings, Master Drawings, at the Norman Villa Gallery in Salthill. Five Decades, my coffee table book published by Lilliput, will be available in mid-July.'
In conversation with Alanna Gallagher
