Ciaran adds a blast of colour to city streets

City Lives – Bernie Ní Fhlatharta meets artist Ciarán Dunlevy who is commissioned to create public work

Street art is often confused with graffiti but artist, Ciarán Dunlevy says it’s very simple to tell the difference – one is commissioned and the other is not.

The issue of painted images on some buildings around the city has made City Council planners see red and they are insisting that these murals be removed.

However, there appears to be a huge body of support for the preservation of what many regard as art – and they are art says one of their creators.

“All the street art around the city was commissioned by the businesses themselves. Graffiti is about people using spray cans to tag names and slogans on open spaces,” says Ciarán matter of factly.

Ciarán painted the giant eye on an optician’s gable wall in Woodquay, a pair of giant ladies’ legs on a shoe shop front and a host of musicians, dead and living, on the gable wall of Sally Longs pub in Abbeygate Street, among others.

None of these were done by him unsolicited, although he does admit, he actually approached Sally Long management because he couldn’t bear looking at what was there previously, another mural that was fading and had the paint peeling off it. Every time he passed it, he wanted so badly to touch it up to improve it.

His persistence paid off because they agreed and now the collection of rock and rollers is a talking point with visitors, who often pose in front of it. The work took him six weeks.

It is quite dramatic. There’s Elvis up in heaven pointing a finger at God in a nod to Michelangelo’s famous painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Right underneath is another homage, this time to da Vinci’s Last Supper mural on a wall in Milan.

The stars at the ‘last supper’ table are all dead while the ones painted below that image are still around. There are 24 in all and they are all very recognisable.

In fact, Ciarán is very good at portraits and he is currently very excited about realism art, art which makes its subjects look like they are photographic images.

Ciarán quotes Dru Blair and David Naylor, leading pioneers of ‘realism art’ or hyper-realism, as it is also known.

“They are the best realism artists in the world. I met Dru and he explained that in an effort to take a photograph and trying to tweak the picture on the camera, he decided to paint the image and made it better than real!”

And yes indeed, the image painted by Dru on Ciarán’s camera of a woman is indeed like the real thing. It’s hard to believe it is painted by a human hand.

Ciarán seems to be able to turn his hand to either realism, abstract or whatever art style is suited to a commission.

He mostly uses the airbrush technique and can dab a little dot onto a surface or spray a much larger space by pulling away from the piece to control the paint density.

He also has a great eye for colour matching; “I can perfectly match any shade by mixing the right colours”, he says pointing to the walls of McSwiggan’s in Woodquay where we meet for breakfast.

“And I can even match the shaded parts or the part where the light is shining directly onto it.” He’s not a bit offended at the idea of doing a bit of interior decorating and says he likes that too; anything to do with making a place look much better.

He recently started experimenting with mixing paint with water and letting it evolve organically, aided by air pressure. Again, he shows images of these experiments on his phone and his enthusiasm is contagious as he asks if I can make out the forms in the image. They are quite psychedelic.

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.