Basil Blackshaw
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Basil Blackshaw, artist, was born in Glengormley, County Antrim, Northern Ireland in 1932.
Educated at Belfast College of Art, he was initially acclaimed for his mastery of traditional approaches to painting. He continued to develop as an artist becoming most highly regarded for his very loose gestural application of paint and a very distinctive and subtle use of colour. His paintings of such sports as horse racing and boxing have made him particularly popular but Blackshaw is also a talented portrait painter.
Blackshaw's painting are often figurative in form, but with a non-naturalistic palate which rebalances the composition in an expressionist, even abstract, way. His themes are very Irish and often rural; greyhounds, Irish Travellers and the landscape. He has also produced portraits and has designed posters for Derry's Field Day Theatre Company.
The Arts Council of Northern Ireland organised a major retrospective of his work in 1995, which travelled from Belfast to Dublin, Cork and many galleries in the United States. In 2001 he received the Glen Dimplex Award for a Sustained Contribution to the Visual Arts in Ireland. The Ulster Museum held a major exhibition of his work in 2002.
[edit] Works in Collections
- The Arts Council of Northern Ireland including:
- The Arts Council of Ireland including:
- The Ulster Museum
- The Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery, Dublin, including:
[edit] References and external links
- Brian McAvera (2002), Basil Blackshaw: A New Vision, Irish Arts Review Vol 19 No 3.
- Aosdána short biography
- The Press Release announcing the 2001 Glen Dimplex award
