The Seán Lawlor Artists Trust helps cash-strapped artists in need of medical care – physical and emotional
'LOVE AND fear are what this business of cancer comes down to," said the late actor Seán Lawlor, frail but spirited, to the fundraisers who supported him in his illness. Lawlor, also a playwright and painter, and known for his performances in Braveheart, In the Name of the Fatherand Titanic, died in October 2009, aged 55.
“Cancerous growth in the kidney, lung cancer, and then they threw in brain cancer,” Seán memorably told his friends, deciding “this story is no longer about me”.
On his passing, the Seán Lawlor Artists Trust was established, an organisation for Irish-based artists who are sick or in need of care and attention. It is funded by private contributions and began considering applications this month.
Seán’s struggle to find the right path for medical treatment was accompanied by financial challenge. It is easy to forget that a freelance actor, writer, musician or visual artist lacks the stability and continuity of benefits available to a salaried employee.
“When he came home from LA,” said Seán’s brother Eric, who is on the board of the trust, “we were going to remortgage the house, until the community came out for him.”
Pádraig Murray, president of the actors’ union Irish Equity and a member of the trust, stresses how, even in the boom times, things were tough for artists. “In the down times things are worse.” He says that an artist who is in dire financial straits and in need of care or medical attention, “won’t necessarily pay the doctor’s bill, when they can just buy a packet of aspirin instead”.
Stephen Walsh knows the harshest physical and material struggles of being a self-employed artist. He is quadriplegic and uses a wheelchair, but has some use of his hands. He began painting more than 20 years ago, and has since exhibited at the Green Gallery, Imma, the Guinness Hop Store and Temple Bar Gallery, to name a few.
According to Dermot O’Grady, director of the Green Gallery, “Stephen’s mental strength is incredible, and keeps him going through his physical disabilities. He is finding it desperately difficult to make ends meet working as a professional artist, but he would never dream of being otherwise.”
“I don’t see my disability as a disability,” says Walsh. Yes, I need a care worker to help me, to hold the canvas for me, but I do the physical painting myself. I don’t focus on my disability – I focus on overcoming.”
One of the challenges for the Artists Trust will be selecting the criteria by which an applicant will qualify to have their medical bills paid. There might be an overwhelming spectrum of artists currently unable to work due to poor health that are in need of day-to-day support.
Those suffering from psychological as well as physical affliction will be considered. Yet an artist who works in the public realm might be reluctant to confront their own mental-health issues and seek financial aid.
The writer Ronan Sheehan, who knew Lawlor, has suffered from a manic depression that for a time dissipated his work practice. In hindsight, he says, “a feature of elation which is terrifying is that your thoughts race and you can’t stop them – as if you were on a bicycle and you couldn’t get off it. Different things come into your brain and you pursue them. It’s exhausting and it’s terrifying.”
He describes the grim transition from a milieu of literati and film producers to “a world of GPs, medication, specialists”.
During the worst phases he struggled to finish a film script and published his novel Foley's Asia. When the book received international critical acclaim, it was like "being lifted out". Ronan sees strong links between creativity and the illness.
“Manic depression was the way of clearing a path for my unconscious to express itself,” he said.
In the documentary The Yellow Bittern, the late folk musician Liam Clancy describes his nervous breakdown. Reminiscing about a time during the height of his career, when support for the arts was yet unheard of, he tells the director Alan Gilsenan how it came when he least expected it.
“Finishing a tour of 35 dates in 21 nights . . . suddenly I got a total fit of panic. I thought my arms were drifting away from me and my head was detaching, and I said to Tom [Clancy] ‘get me a double whiskey. Make it two doubles’.”
Panic attacks caused him to realise the seriousness of his drinking problem. “The only way we kept going was we had a constant bottle of whiskey. Wanted some energy? Took it out of the bottle of whiskey.”
Gabriel Byrne, who was this year appointed Ireland’s first cultural ambassador, supports the trust and appeals to the public to consider artists in need. “Seán Lawlor was a friend of mine, and sadly he passed far too soon,” he says.
“I think the trust is a wonderful idea. It raises awareness of the precarious life of the artist. At any one time, 98 per cent of actors, for example, are unemployed, and are most vulnerable during illness and disability. Most artists exist on paltry recompense, and yet the contribution they make to our cultural life is inestimable.”
For Byrne, this is an opportunity for all the different stories from the varying strands of need to come together. “As well as providing a gathering place for the exchange of ideas, the trust will serve as an inspiration to action to improve the material well-being of those we so often take for granted,” he says.
For details of the Seán Lawlor Artists Trust call 085-1093422. For funding applications write to the trust at 13 Classon House, Dundrum Business Park, Dundrum, Dublin 14
