---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lionel Miskin (painter and ceramicist)—
There are artists…and artists: I am not endeared to them as a category. And excellence — that’s so much in doubt, in dispute at the best of times. Personally I have always been intrigued by the rare possibility of the kind of artist who not only paints well, but makes a beautiful small envelope around him that laps over the edges of canvases and whatever else he works on to form an environment in which he and perhaps his family now receive you. But I met him twice only: at the very beginning of his artistic life, and at the end of it.
It may have been 1951, I am not sure when, I was over in Dublin to have a show of my own stuff that someone thought of taking me along to see a young painter everyone was talking about... Well, he meant business alright —that was obvious. That afternoon he seemed, to me, remarkably sure of himself, serious, not given to gratuitous smiles, pretty formidable, a very handsome, clear-eyed man with the faint touch of contempt in his expression that I associated with the men in Manet’s paintings...
But let me describe the house...
If you build your house as you really want it, shape it, decorate it, place it in its environment as he had done, it’s no longer any common or garden house. Its an extension of you — as the territory is around a queen ant. It's an art object, but in spite of Oscar Wilde's canon, a useful one; one...to use... Patrick's house was remarkable... Everything about it was fascinating, surprising, individual... It was my first experience of such a place and I shall never forget it. You need a lot of will, strength and contempt for a certain limitation of professionalism that makes people work only for money and fame, to create such a place for yourself, for your family, and at the same time against a background of painting and running a pottery...
Patrick’s own ceramics were a lesson in many ways — they were in the simplest way figurative and decorative, completely individual, really worked in the medium, and had about them such a breath of life and imagination expressed with a very particular touch and brio... Patrick really released his imagination in his pottery and pressed the medium to its utmost absolutely, not as potters ever do, but painters like Picasso, Chagall...
The great film director Jean Renoir’s biography of his father left me with this feeling, finally, he had rated him even more for the way he lived than for his masterpieces. And it’s not so common among artists. So many are diminished in life as they expand in their work. But it was all of a piece with Patrick: his wife Oonagh, his daughters, the whole set-up… they added up to something. I sensed it as anyone would immediately. After my brief visit I really felt I had been in a very unusual household, in a sense, just in time... And for a long time felt very sad for them all. What’s the use of saying the man could have done so many more excellent things. But that’s how it was — he was at the peak of his powers.
— Lionel Miskin (painter and ceramicist; studied at St Martin’s College), Patrick Swift 1927-83, Gandon Editions, 1993
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HOME
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Images
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dublin Oil - Dublin Watercolour/ Ink - Italy - Oakridge/ Ashwell Watercolour - Oakridge/ Ashwell Oil - London Oil - London Watercolour/ Ink - France - Algarve Oil - Algarve Watercolour/ Ink - Self-Portraits - Trees - Portraits I - Portraits II - Porches Pottery - Books - Misc - Algarve Studio
Note: many of the reproductions displayed here are of poor quality
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
By Swift
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nano Reid - Some notes on Caravaggio - Italian Report - The Artist Speaks - X magazine - RHA Exhibition 1951 - Eça de Queiroz & Fernando Pessoa - The Portuguese Enigma - Notebooks - All
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
About Swift
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Main
Patrick Swift: An Irish Painter in Portugal - IMMA 1993 Retrospective Catalogue - Dublin 1950-2 - By His Friends - X magazine - Poems - Further Quotes About - All
By His Friends
Anthony Cronin - John Ryan - John Jordan - C.H.Sisson - Martin Green - John McGahern - David Wright - Lima de Freitas - Katherine Swift - Tim Motion - Lionel Miskin - Jacques D'Arribehaude - Brian Higgins - George Barker - Patrick Kavanagh
Further Quotes
Brian Fallon - Aidan Dunne - Derek Hill - Brendan Behan - Lucian Freud - Patrick Kavanagh - Elizabeth Smart - Further Quotes About
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
HOME
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
