Adam's IMPORTANT IRISH ART 1st June 2022

20 8 COLIN DAVIDSON PPRUA (B.1968) What Isn’t Said (Portrait of Roddy Doyle) Oil on linen, 127 x 117cm (50 x 46’’) Signed Exhibited: Dublin, Royal Hibernian Academy, 2011 Annual Exhibition € 15,000 - 20,000 A household name isn’t always that. But Roddy Doyle’s name is known in every household in Ireland and in many households elsewhere. Educated at a National School in Raheny, at St Fintan’s Christian Brothers school in Sutton and then at UCD, Doyle taught English and Geography in Kilbarrack 1979-1993. Kilbarrack became the Barrytown in his fiction. His first novel The Commitments, published 1989, was filmed in 1991. Known for his books for adults and children, the film adap- tations, his plays, his television dramas, his street cred and his commitment to young aspiring writers through Fight- ing Words, Doyle’s work has changed the map of Irish literature. It introduced readers to a working-class who face hassles and challenges with resilience and an earthy humour, a working class never oppressed by the Catholic Church. For Doyle, a self-professed atheist, priests do not get a look in. When Colin Davidson’s commissioned portrait of Angela Merkel made the cover of Time magazine in December 2015 it was viewed by millions. That Merkel portrait was based on photographs and it was the first time he painted a portrait without a live sitting. But Roddy Doyle sat for him as did Queen Elizabeth II, President Michael D Higgins, Jennifer Johnston, Seamus Heaney, Ed Sheeran, Jamie Doran, Christy Moore, Michael Longley and Brian Friel. This portrait of Roddy Doyle, dated 2011, was painted when Colin Davidson was forty-three. The writer was fifty-three. By then, Doyle was firmly established in the literary world. In 1993, Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha won the prestigious Booker Prize and when Doyle was appointed a Royal Society of Literature Fellow, his significance was acknowledged and assured. Davidson, born Belfast 1968, says ‘I am constantly drawn back to the human form, and more broadly “humanity” in all my work’ and Doyle’s humanity shines through here. Doyle is a quiet, relaxed presence. He is a writer at ease with himself and his audience. The casual open-necked, red-and-black checked shirt, the dark t-shirt beneath sug- gest nothing self-important or formal about this sitter. Has anyone ever seen Roddy Doyle in a collar and tie? Doyle is no attention seeker. He himself says ‘I’m not recognised that much. I’m just a bald man in glasses and there’s a rash of them in Dublin.’ But this bald man in glasses with a steady, friendly gaze, has an original and lively imagination. The viewer returns again and again to Doyle’s eyes. He looks away to our right, he looks through steel-rimmed glasses, the frames and the reflections are brilliantly accurate but the skin tones and textures reveal Davidson’s expert handling of paint. In his portraits, painterliness is always evident. Davidson captures the thinking, imagining presence of his sitter in a brilliant likeness but fluent brushwork means it’s more interesting than a hard-edged, photographic-re- alistic portrait. That blurred ear merges with the plain background, the red in the shirt melts into the abstract backdrop, the softness in the wrinkled high forehead and the rounded head contrast with the more defined and effectively-lit face. Roddy Doyle, with an open, friendly look, is a man you’d be happy to have a drink with. Above all else, Doyle’s intelligence shines through. This is a large portrait. His head is big but anyone who knows anything about Roddy Doyle, the man and his work, knows that he is never big-headed. In his studio Da- vidson says that he always leaves the sitter choose wheth- er to remain silent or speak during a sitting. Colin David- son’s title What Isn’t Said reminds us that Roddy Doyle is a wordsmith. Doyle’s medium is language but Davidson working in what Virginia Woolf calls ‘the silent kingdom of paint’ suggests, in that chosen title, that things remain unspoken, that Roddy Doyle has more to say. Niall MacMonagle