The Northern Irish artist – best known for his award-winning children’s books, including ‘How to Catch a Star’ and ‘Here We Are’, and his sculpture ‘The Moon, the Earth and Us’ in New York’s High Line Park – has collaborated with U2 on album covers and concert art. He lives between Belfast and Brooklyn …
DESCRIBE YOUR PARENTS? I lost my mum 24 years ago. She had MS. She always encouraged us to be curious and mischievous. My dad was the primary caregiver and he has given me the best advice that I’ve ever received. They were two rock-solid human beings that were in my corner from day one.
YOU WERE BORN IN AUSTRALIA BUT RAISED IN BELFAST, WHAT DEFINED YOUR CHILDHOOD? My parents left Australia when I was six months old. The symptoms of my mum’s illness were starting to show, so they came home. It was a joyous childhood surrounded by a loving family. Despite all the political violence and everything, we had quite a normal upbringing and my mum and dad tried to give us a wellrounded view and protect us from the worst of it. I remember playing football on the street, digging holes, climbing trees. My brother once said: “We can speak two languages, Catholic and Protestant.”
YOU WENT TO AN INTEGRATED SECONDARY SCHOOL,WHAT WAS THAT LIKE? As an educator, my dad was very forward thinking and never liked how segregated the system was, so when this new thing came along, he was in favour of that. Going in there as an eleven-year-old boy, you just made friends with the people around you and it didn’t occur to you to ask what religion they were.
WHAT DID YOU THINK YOU’D GROW UP TO BE? Whenever the career teacher came in and I found out that being an artist could be a real job, I was like, “I think that’s for me.”
WHAT WAS YOUR PATH TO BECOMING AN ARTIST? I went through art college wanting to be a painter and just scraping by. I thought I had the wool pulled over everyone’s eyes, but then I realised that you only get out what you put in and I was only doing a disservice to myself. That didn’t happen until the last year of college, which was also around the time my mum died and with that came a perspective shift.
WHEN DID YOU DECIDE TO START WRITING? That came much later. The first book I did was a series of individual paintings for a show that I kind of looked at and thought, “Oh, there’s a momentum here.” I had been looking at picture books that I enjoyed as a kid and I thought it might work as a picture book and then that was that. I never set out to be a picture book maker.
“Having children led to writing the more political and sociological books about the state of the world, thinking of the world as a place my children will inherit.”
YOUR NEW BOOK WHERE TO HIDE A STAR IS A SEQUEL TO ONE OF YOUR FIRST BOOKS, HOW TO CATCH A STAR. HOW DID THAT COME ABOUT? Hard as it is to believe, How to Catch a Star was published 20 years ago. Lost and Found was made the following year and then The Way Back Home and Up and Down. So it’s 15 years since I’ve looked at that character but I was aware of the anniversary coming up and I was reading those books to my kids and I thought if something were to come up, I’d explore it again. The concept did arise and in a joyful way, rather than being forced. It felt like a reunion with old friends.
HOW DO YOU WORK BEST? I have a studio in Brooklyn that’s more for large-scale fine art painting and then I also have two employees in Northern Ireland, so while I do the physical artwork alone, there are always people around. I suppose my biggest strength is twofold. In terms of production, it’s perseverance, but in terms of creation, my biggest strength is the ability to observe and then to translate.
YOU LIVED IN THE US FOR A LONG TIME BEFORE MOVING BACK TO NORTHERN IRELAND IN RECENT YEARS. WAS THAT ALWAYS PART OF YOUR PLAN? My wife is also from Northern Ireland and we met here and went to the US together. We had gone travelling for a year with the kids before they were going to start school, supposedly from July 2019 to September 2020. We had rented out our apartment in New York and we got as far as Japan and then Covid hit and we had nowhere to go. So we ended up coming back to Northern Ireland. Time just kept ticking on and next thing we know we’re putting the kids in school here and then it’s, like, “Oh, there’s something really nice about being here.” So it’s still a bit back and forth. My main studio is still in Brooklyn but I make the books in Northern Ireland and we’re falling into the rhythm of it being this way. It’s like having two different mindsets. I go to New York to fill up and then go back to Northern Ireland to empty out again.
YOU’D LIKE PEOPLE TO REGARD YOU AS … A decent human being.
YOUR FRIENDSHIPS ARE FOR THE MOST PART … Lifelong and filled with equal support.
YOUR MOST PHYSICALLY ATTRACTIVE FEATURE IN YOUR OPINION IS … I don’t know. My hands.
YOUR STYLE SIGNIFIER IS … A white chore coat, and I always wear a hat. My mother-in-law thought I was bald the first six weeks that I knew her because I was always wearing a hat.
YOUR FAVOURITE SHOES ARE … I have about five pairs from a company called Feit: the idea is that you buy them for life and they repair them every so often. They are made in Europe using leather discarded by the meat industry. It takes a while to break them in. I wear tan leather Feit shoes or white Vans.
YOUR EXERCISE ROUTINE INCLUDES … I stretch every day. I also play football twice a week. Once a week outdoors with people mostly 15 years younger than me and once indoors with people ten to 15 years older than me. The harder one is with the older men, where the standard is much higher. Having been gone [from Northern Ireland] for 15 years, I didn’t have friends here when I came back so I asked around and found these two games.
YOU RECENTLY READ … I have about 15 books on the go at the minute. Because I’m travelling a lot, I tend to leave one in one place and then have to move on to something else. But I’ve just finished The Bee Sting by Paul Murray. It really frustrated me at the end.
WHERE IS YOUR HAPPY PLACE? In the kitchen cooking dinner for family and friends or on a football pitch when it’s going well. But the centre island of my Brooklyn studio, where I talk with friends and bat back and forth ideas for concepts, is the centre of my creative universe.
DO YOU WRITE DIFFERENTLY NOW YOU HAVE CHILDREN YOURSELF? Yes, but not in the way you would expect. Having children led to the more political and sociological books about the state of the world rather than, “Oh, I’m going to tell you stories about the things you guys are interested in right now.” I kind of went the opposite way, into thinking, “Well, somebody has to explain the state of the world to them.” That turned in to Here We Are, What We’ll Build and Begin Again, and came from thinking of the world as a place my children will inherit.
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