AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARIES Feb 2019
Those of you who have been following my blogs over the last years will be familiar with my revolutionary works of Irish Revolutionaries, oppressed Palestinians, Black Activists and of course Che Guevara.
In 2018 I was commissioned to paint Frederick Douglass as part of his 200th Anniversary but I’ve been at this for over 50 years now, having started my first drawings of Martin Luther King in 1967.
Frederick Douglass always fascinated me and in particular the Irish connection with this incredible man who escaped slavery and would go on to be a great statesman of the world.
Finding Freedom in Ireland
Douglass’ friends and mentors feared that the publicity (from his published book and public speaking) would draw the attention of his ex-owner, Hugh Auld, who might try to get his “property” back. They encouraged Douglass to tour Ireland, as many former slaves had done.
Douglass set sail on the Cambria for Liverpool on August 16, 1845. He traveled in Ireland as the Irish Potato Famine was beginning.
The feeling of freedom from American racial discrimination amazed Douglass:
Eleven days and a half gone and I have crossed three thousand miles of the perilous deep. Instead of a democratic government, I am under a monarchical government. Instead of the bright, blue sky of America, I am covered with the soft, grey fog of the Emerald Isle [Ireland]. I breathe, and lo! the chattel [slave] becomes a man. I gaze around in vain for one who will question my equal humanity, claim me as his slave, or offer me an insult. I employ a cab—I am seated beside white people—I reach the hotel—I enter the same door—I am shown into the same parlour—I dine at the same table—and no one is offended … I find myself regarded and treated at every turn with the kindness and deference paid to white people. When I go to church, I am met by no upturned nose and scornful lip to tell me, ‘We don’t allow niggers in here!’
-Frederick Douglass
-Taken from Wikipedia
So, why is an Irishman painting Black Activists?
Back in 1962, I was just out of college, working in advertising as a graphic designer and full of optimism in a grey, oppressed but independent Ireland. Slowly, we woke up to the reality of clerical oppression and governmental control dictated by a deeply dysfunctional Catholic Church and, as we found out later, deeply abusive clergy.
We were all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed idealists, naive perhaps, but we all felt, thanks mainly to the Hippie movement and the Civil Rights marches, that the old established order was about to collapse and a new brighter day was about to dawn across the ‘Free World’ as we knew it then.
Influence from Across the Pond
We took our cues from JFK and Bobby Kennedy and their stand for equality and Civil Rights as they took on the racists who controlled the Deep South and imposed apartheid on its own black population, who were in fact freed from slavery by Abraham Lincoln then re-enslaved by the brutal Jim Crow laws.
I know it sounds implausible but we Irish, well used to 800 years of oppression and attempted genocides, had massive empathy with Martin Luther King and his marchers for freedom and racial equality which dominated TV screens worldwide.
We had the stirrings of revolt against the established right all across Europe where half the entire population was ruled by right-wing fascist dictatorships from Spain and Portugal right across to Greece and the military dictatorship.
We also took our cues from the new and powerful US student marchers and their opposition to the appalling and completely erroneous Vietnam War where almost 60,000 young Americans were to lose their lives in a futile, brutal and idiotic cause.
A Bright Eyed Revolutionary
By 1967 I was working full-time -and being paid a fortune -all the while working free for leftist movements like The Workers Party and also paid publications like Nusight and Hibernia magazine producing illustrations, book, and pamphlet/booklet covers -and posters for sale for the Workers Party under the GPO.
My first efforts were large posters of Irish martyrs, starting with executed Irish revolutionaries Padraic Pearse and Kevin Barry. I was producing sketches of all my own heroes with the purpose of producing a new, powerful series of revolutionary heroes and by 1967-68 I had also produced the now-iconic red and black Che Guevara poster of 1968 after two false-start posters attempts.
It was my intention to join the Great Poster Explosion of the late 60s, the most exciting development in the recent history of art when art became, as we thought, democratic, out of the museums and galleries and onto the streets.
‘Art for the People’ was my own slightly pompous slogan but it got great traction in the local media and got my work circulating all over London and into the US poster and head shops, albeit in a small way.
My art heroes were the San Francisco Bay Area artists like Rick Griffin, Stanley Mouse, Moscoso, and Kelley. My political heroes were the same, all radical, all charismatic and heroic: Che Guevara, JFK and RFK, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Angela Davis, the entire Civil Rights movement and the more radical Black Panthers.
So now I had the ability to produce and sell my art via posters and my plan was to add to my art series with a tribute to my then heroes so I ran off marker roughs of Angela Davis, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X Socialist revolutionary James Connolly and a few others. I am now reworking these artworks with my daughter Suzanne, who is even more radical than myself
02. MLK 03. Malcolm X Connolly
Images Change the World
You may well ask yourself why the hell would a young, white, freckled redhead Irish kid be even interested in the Black Civil Rights Movement, the Freedom Riders, the appalling reprisal murders and the mass marches into the water cannons and batons of the white Southern police?
All of these progressive and radical movements sprang from 60s activism and the mindset we developed by witnessing things like the historic and powerful Black Power salute at the Olympic Games of 1968 by John Carlos and Tommy Smith.
This image absolutely electrified me and so many others as we watched the winners ceremony live on Television. I was inspired from that moment on to try to do something, anything to help the black struggle for civil rights. No doubt about it, I still feel the same.
Part 2 Coming next week.
New American Revolutionaries Artworks.
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