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James Wray and Company

Irish and International Art Gallery in Belfast

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Basil Blackshaw

May 3, 2016 by

Drohill Bridge

11x8.5"

Mixed Media on Canvas

Blonde Traveller

17.5x13.5"

Oil on Canvas

Horses Exercising

30x40

Basil Blackshaw

1932

Born in Glengormley, County Antrim, Northern Ireland and brought up in Boardmills, County Down, Blackshaw attended Methodist College Belfast and studied at Belfast College of Art (1948–1951). In 1951 Blackshaw was awarded a scholarship by the Committee for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts, to study in Paris.

He was initially acclaimed for his mastery of traditional approaches to painting. He continued to develop as an artist becoming most highly regarded for his very loose gestural application of paint and a very distinctive and subtle use of colour. His paintings of such sports as horse racing and boxing have made him particularly popular but Blackshaw is also a talented portrait painter.

Blackshaw's painting are very often figurative in form, but with a non-naturalistic palate which rebalances the composition in an expressionist, even abstract, way. His themes are very Irish and often rural; greyhounds, Irish Travellers and the landscape. He has also produced portraits and has designed posters for Derry's Field Day Theatre Company.

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14-16 James Street South, Belfast, Northern Ireland, BT2 7GA
Tel: 028 9031 3013 Email info@jameswray.ie

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