Frank Phelan (1932 - 2023)
Phelan’s paintings broach areas of concern in an informed, highly literate way … His documented track record weaves him Zelig-like into a major strand of Irish twentieth –century art history.
Aidan Dunne in The Irish Times, December 8, 2004
Born in Dublin, Frank Phelan was educated by the Christian Brothers and in Tipperary at Rockwell College, before studying at the Royal Architectural Institute of Ireland. He then worked as a draughtsman in a Dublin firm of structural engineers until 1953, when he, his father and his brother Brian emigrated to Canada. For six years, he worked in Ontario at various jobs while taking classes at the Doon School of Fine Arts in Kitchener.
Around 1959, he returned to Ireland briefly before moving to London, where he lived with the sculptor Frank Morris. He found work as a stagehand at Joan Littlewood’s innovative Stratford East Theatre, and designed sets for the Unity Theatre and for Charles Marowitz’s Open Space Theatre Company. His theatre contacts eventually led to an introduction to Nancy Wynne-Jones, who invited him to be an artist-in-residence in Trevaylor, the Georgian house at Gulvel, near Penzance she had converted into a kind of artist’s colony. It was here that Phelan befriended the painter Tony O’Malley, who introduced him to many of the key figures in the early St. Ives circle, including Roger Hilton, Bryan Wynter, Patrick Heron and Conor Fallon. Phelan was also particularly impressed by the work of Peter Lanyon. Throughout the decade, he worked between Cornwall and a rented studio off the Fulham Road, developing a highly abstracted, compositional style. By 1966, he had had his first solo show of paintings at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, organised by Richard Demarco. This partnership was one of the most fruitful of his early career, and he also showed his work at Demarco’s inaugural exhibition in Glasgow, in another solo show the following year at Demarco’s Edinburgh gallery, and in several important group shows, including an exhibition of contemporary British painting and sculptors at the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw.
During the past two decades, Phelan re-engineered and re-energised his style and technique, exhibiting new works in Dublin, Cork, London, Bath, Provence, Granada, and of course, St Ives. His paintings and mixed media works are now in private collections in England, Ireland, France, the United States, as well as in the State Collection of Ireland (OPW) and the Cork Institute of Technology.