WHYTE'S IMPORTANT IRISH ART MONDAY 27 MAY 2019 AT 6PM

94 Basil Blackshaw HRHA RUA (1932-2016) UNTITLED I and UNTITLED II acrylic on canvas; (diptych) signed twice in lower corners 49 by 78in. (124.5 by 198.1cm) Provenance: Paul Yates Collection. Literature: ‘Paul Yates Studio Editions’, Spotlight, Ulster Tatler, December 2010 (illustrated, detail) I first saw these paintings around the time MOURNE [a collection of poems by Paul Yates and images by Basil Blackshaw.] was published by the Tom Caldwell Gallery, in 2005. Encouraged by Basil, Lady Glentoran and I had given Paul Yates a studio space on our estate. [Later we also provided him with a gallery space.] In return Basil generously gifted us images not included in the MOURNE book when he left off various works and materials to Paul’s studio space including ‘UNTITLED’. Originally intended as a birthday gift for Paul [based on Yates’s poem of the same title and a photograph of Yates standing before McConnell’s drapers shop mirror in Kilkeel, Co. Down, taken by Julian Watson, a curator with the Ulster Museum.] Basil became so intrigued by the poem he decided to paint the view from the other side of the mirror as well resulting in an outstanding diptych unlike anything he had tried before. Basil told me he could not claim to understand the poem but the ideas in it had ‘got a grip on him and were haunting him.’ He considered exploring the images further in oil crayons but to the best of my knowledge never did so. Some years later I asked Basil and Paul to produce a book based around the poem and images, the idea being to add pencil drawings and use the diptych as front and back covers. Basil tried various pencil works but ultimately none of us were happy stretching the original concepts. In 2009 two Chinese student boarders from Victoria College, Belfast, on work experience at the Caldwell gallery, won Paul and Basil over to allowing them to create a print of the images with a Chinese translation of the poem as a school project on behalf of charity. The history of the collaborations between Blackshaw and Yates, across film, books and prints, was of each artist pushing the other into new areas of experimentation. This is certainly the case with UNTITLED. It is fascinating to see how far Basil developed the original photograph to portray so well the metaphysical enigmas of the poem. I had known Basil since the middle nineteen seventies, commissioned quite a number of paintings from him and had many discussions with him concerning the creative process. The relationship shared by Basil and Paul was one of high mutual personal and artistic respect. Basil described Paul as the ‘ultimate surrealist, a marvellous imagination and his own man, you wouldn’t know what he would do next.’ Paul referred to Basil as ‘an artistic genius of great humanity, to visit him in his studio is a spiritual experience, like going to church.’ In writing the introduction to MOURNE their mutual friend and fellow artist Jack Pakenham remarked, Paul and Basil are true eccentrics, that is in the literal sense to be found in the Greek word ek kentros meaning literally ‘out of centre’ or beyond the centre, the Greeks believing that the vast majority of people saw and interpreted external reality from a central core which led to a pretty uniform consensus of opinion, but that on the other hand there were people born outside the central core who saw the same phenomena from the circumference, giving them a totally different perspective on things; these people were the original thinkers, the philosophers, the poets, the artists. Paul and Basil struck up a strong friendship over the years based on the recognition that each had a unique way of seeing and portraying things. They recognised in each other ‘fellow souls’. Lord Glentoran, April 2019