Pauline Bewick RHA (Artist) in Conversation with Triona Minogue and Brenda Agnew

We, Triona Minogue and Brenda Agnew, have long been inspired by Pauline Bewick, one of Ireland’s foremost contemporary artists – not least for her wonderfully rich, feminist and free-spirited artwork, but also for the authentic, self-actualising way she has lived her life. We thought her life would be of particular interest to psychotherapists. She was very interested to be interviewed for this journal and welcomed us to her home and studio in Kerry.

Pauline had a very unusual upbringing given that she was reared in the 1930s. Her mother left her father and came to Ireland with baby Pauline and her older sister. She got a position in Kerry as a foster mother to two orphaned children, Lucy and Michael, whose parents had died of TB. She reared the four children all happily together for six years on a small farm in Kerry and fitted in despite her unconventional parenting, vegetarianism, single-parent status and lack of religious beliefs.

When Lucy died tragically from meningitis, Michael was sent to Switzerland for the clean air and to study catering so Pauline’s mother reluctantly had to move on with her two daughters. Thus began a nomadic existence for the three of them between Ireland and the UK living in various cottages, caravans, and at one stage a houseboat. Pauline, who is dyslexic, sporadically attended many ‘progressive schools’ in the UK and subsequently attended art college in Dublin.

Brenda: How did people in Ireland react to your mother, given that she was so unconventional?

Pauline: I think people sensed that she was a natural woman and liked her. As a result of my mother’s complete openness with absolutely everybody, nobody was down on her in Ireland – I think this was due to her open attitude. You got what you saw with h

She pooh-poohed education and would say ‘what do you want to fill your head with all that rubbish’ – she didn’t want me to study and be influenced by other artists and so therefore I grew up without giving myself the label of ‘artist’ – it just came out, I just drew. It was like she just let me pour out the real me instead of being influenced by lots of things. But it left me inadequate – thankfully she gave me enough confidence not to care that I am inadequate – because I have no formal education.

Triona: What about your father?

Pauline: I never knew him. He died from alcohol when I was two-and-a- half (which incidentally, was when she did her first drawings). He was non-existent in my life. That was until I met a Gestalt therapist many years later. She asked me ‘What does he mean to you? Can you find him in your body?’ I thought this was a bit hippyish, but I went along with it. Then I could see clearly on my right-hand side a grey stone man. He was a finely formed man, cold and well built. To my amazement, the left-hand side was all bright, sunny and yellow. The therapist asked me to draw the grey man and see if I could find any life in him. I couldn’t, I just couldn’t find any life in him. She turned the drawing sideways; it then seemed to take the form of a manatee. It was alive. She sent me home to draw more grey men and said ‘keep the life in him’.

Pauline had already developed ‘the Yellow Man’ – who represented her ideal being. She had a hugely successful Yellow Man exhibition in 1996 but she had no idea of the existence of the Grey Man until this was brought out by the therapist. The Grey Man was a complete surprise to her. While she had been pleased with her creation of the Yellow Man, the Grey Man had been hidden and his discovery led to a sense of balance.

I love puzzling out relationships ‒ and I find wild men very attractive ‒ although I didn’t need to marry one. (Pauline married a psychiatrist, Pat Melia, in 1963). Pat never analysed to me my paintings which he could have done – but never did and I was glad about that. I could take it now but I couldn’t take it then. Pat said the therapist changed me for the better – I wasn’t as blaming of men in the world. The therapist felt deep down I had not forgiven my father.

Brenda: How do you understand your mother’s change of response?

Pauline: I think she felt I had let her down, left her basically. And so she hurt me by saying ‘I have gone off art’. She rejected me. God, that was hard to get over. The very one thing she told me I was brilliant at and a genius and then saying I have gone off it. I think my mother needed analysing ‒ she had an interesting childhood ‒ her father re-married a woman who was the same age as her eldest sister.

Pat was my father then – he looked after me during that time – nobody else could have done it as well as Pat. I have to say, I married the right man for me. He was stable – not that I didn’t rebel against his stableness and go off to the South Seas – but he was my therapist, father and the person to rebel against – all of those things. I think he enjoyed the challenge in his life!

Pauline showed us a number of paintings that in hindsight seem prophetic. For example, one painting bears a remarkable resemblance to the Twin Towers, with white crosses – painted two months before the 9/11 disaster – and another painting of an aeroplane falling into the Hudson river.

Triona: Did the affair help your relationship?

Pauline: It didn’t energise our relationship ‒ just in ourselves ‒ it didn’t make us closer ‒ closer as friends but not as lovers anymore ‒ that was finished but that finishes anyway. But I think it was very important for both of us and a lot of people deprive themselves terribly by being so afraid to sow their wild oats occasionally but I don’t have any regrets about that at all.

Triona and Brenda: Thank you so much, Pauline, for your kind hospitality and for your open and honest sharing of yourself and your life with us. We have really enjoyed meeting you. On behalf of the readers of Inside Out we would like to thank you for agreeing to this interview.

Pauline has generously donated to the State a considerable number of her paintings created across a 70-year period including her first painting when she was aged two-and-a-half – the Seven Ages Collection. They are on permanent view at the Public Library in Killorglin and the Waterford Institute of Technology. A film ‘Yellow Man Grey Man’ made in 2012 by Maurice Galway explores the hugely successful series of work by Pauline known as The Yellow Man. To celebrate Pauline’s 80th birthday, from 5 September 2015 there will be an exhibition of new works by Pauline at Taylor Galleries in Dublin.

Triona Minogue MIAHIP, MIACP works in the psychotherapy service at the Department of Psychiatry, St Vincent’s University Hospital and in private practice in Dun Laoghaire.

Brenda Agnew MIAHIP, MIACP is a humanistic and integrative psychotherapist in private practice in Clontarf, Dublin.