Artist Details

Markey Robinson

Portfolio

Cottages Donegal 2

 

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Markey Robinson (1918 - 1999), who came from Belfast, was part of what may come to be seen as a flowering of visual art in unlikely circumstances in Northern Ireland in the middle and late twentieth century.

He was a noted 'character'. The son of a house painter, he spent time as a boxer and as a merchant sailor but his life's work was his art in all its forms.

He developed a highly distinctive style in his paintings. Those simplified abstract figures and shapes in naive landscapes were a signature note in later years.

In the book 'The Ogham Stone', by Gerald Dawe and Michael Mulreany, Mulreany writes - "In January 1999, in a small house in Tudor Place, off Belfast's Crumlin Road, Markey Robinson died just days short of his eighty-first birthday. He had been an artist for almost sixty years, in which time he created a sprawling oeuvre. In the process he infuriated traditionalists, divided critics, refused to toe any official line, exasperated his supporters and, of course, delighted the art-buying public.

Mulreany notes that many critics were dismissive, while others had other opinions, with John Hewitt, in 1951, hailing Markey as 'Ulster's greatest primitive'. Mulreany concludes - "Certain things are sure, he was one of the channels whereby 'modern' art belatedly entered into the insular Ireland of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, but more than that, he was an important painter and a creative maverick."

For Michael Mulreany's full and interesting discussion on Markey, see http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=f47MDFJEl0IC&pg=PA87&lpg=PA87&dq=Markey+Robinson&source=web&ots=BiGBblaJq_&sig=SSd6T6v_VqdAHq5H6Lnhdssaqv0&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=7&ct=result#PPA89,M1