THE sleepy little village of Portlaw, in Co Waterford, noted for many things - the fact that it was one of the first, purpose built industrial villages in the country, its once famous colon spinning industry, and more recently its tannery, now, sadly closed. What it had not done was make a name for itself for the production of painters, that is, until Pat Phelan emerged.
Phelan's second Waterford exhibition opens in the Granville Hotel in the city tomorrow and runs for over a month. The exhibition will feature portraits of many of the better known denizens of the city and county, people prominent in business, social and political life. It will also contain a selection of landscapes of scenes from around the county.
Leading portraitist
However it is as a leading portraitist that Phelan is best known, and exhibitions don't figure largely in the life of a portrait painter. He has done portraits of many of Dublin's Lord Mayors, many prominent politicians, including former Taoiseach, Charles Haughey and colleagues who served with him in the early 1970s, another former Taoiseach, Albert Reynolds, captains of industry and finance, as well as important sportsmen, such as the champion jockey Johnny Murtagh golfer Des Smyth, rugby captain Ciaran Fitzgerald, and entertainment figures including Maureen Potter, Eamon Andrews, Paddy Cole and Noel Purcell.
Recent commissions have included all the chairmen and directors of RTE since its foundation; the nine deans of UCD's Faculty of Medicine and, before that, a similar commission from the Faculty of Commerce.
The Irish Times once devoted its entire arts page to eight charcoal portraits of the leading actors and writers in that year's Dublin Theatre Festival another series featured the portraits of the chairmen of the largest companies.
Now 69, Phelan is working harder than ever, at a time when many of his contemporaries have dried off their brushes. He is versatile, working in all media oils, watercolour, pastel and charcoal. The bulk of his portraits are in charcoal or oils. He studied art under that brilliant Scotsman, Robert Bourke, at the Waterford Art School, before going to the National College of Art, where the renowned Prof Julius Romain and Sean Keating were among his teachers.
That fellow is a genius
Referring to his 1975 triple portrait of him in the RHA cxhibition, Keating said: "That fellow is a genius, he doesn't know how good he is". Phelan subsequently taught art and then, with a wife and young family to support, he went into advertising as an artist and designer. It was not until the success of portraits, done at weekends and at night, that he decided to forsake the day job and become one of those rare things, a full time artist.
He started his first studio in Dawson Street in Dublin 25 years ago this year. Later he moved to a studio in Grafton Street, before constructing a purpose built studio in his Terenure garden.
Portraiture is a highly specialised and indeed coveted branch of art, but an ever present problem is a subject's perception of what he or she actually looks like. As Phelan explains: "While the artist should possess a confidence in his own ability to turn out good work, he should at all times be able to accept valid criticism. It is not always easy, but striking the right balance in any field of endeavour, especially in art, is never easy.
"Actually, portraiture is infinitely harder than other areas of painting. There really isn't a comparison between a portrait and a landscape. You're balancing on a knife edge all the time. It either goes right or terribly wrong; that's what makes it so difficult."
They say that in artistic endeavours, one should never work with children or animals. They don't faze Phelan. "I've done a lot of children and animals, too - dogs, cats and, of course, racehorses. It's an end of the market I might move into more, animal portraits. It's something I've never pushed, but I have absolutely no problem with them."
Well known characters
While Phelan has held several exhibitions in Dublin in recent times, his last exhibition in Waterford was in 1984. At that time, he painted a number of the city's well known characters and a large canvas of nine of them still dominates the bar of the Granville Hotel, where the owners, Liam and Anne Cusack - who have both posed for him - have invited him back again. Cyclist Sean Kelly and Dawn Run, the only horse to win the Cheltenham Champion Hurdle and the Gold Cup, both in oils, are also on the Granville's walls.
Among the portraits in this exhibition - where many of the subjects will be present to gaze on themselves - are those of Waterford Crystal chief executive Redmond O'Donoghue, James Kennedy, general manager of Bausch and Lomb, the Mayor, Councillor Pat Power, local doctors Paddy Condon and Tom Keogh, hotelier June Darrar and the president of the Chamber of Commerce, Mary Dorgan.
Katharine Bulbulia, director of the Waterford Chamber of Commerce and one of his staunchest supporters, will open the exhibition at 8 p.m. as a Fine Gael senator, she also opened his first exhibition 12 years ago.