The email, when it came, said simply The Painter is Dead.
My friend Phil Kelly, the Irish painter whose enormous talent was matched by his marvelous generosity, had finally succumbed to liver illness.
In truth, I had been bracing myself for the sad news for some time. I knew Phil wasn’t well. But it was still a terrible blow.
I spent most of the 1990s living in Mexico City and I came to know Phil, or The Painter, as many of friends lovingly called him, in the second half of the decade.
For several years at the end of that decade, most of my weekends were spent in Phil’s company. On a Friday night, he would come to the cantina and meet with the foreign press at their weekly get together. But it was the next day that I most remember.
Almost every Saturday Phil and his wife Ruth would invite a bunch of friends round to their house, an un-fancy two-story building in the corner of a un-fancy cul-de-sac. The house was big but almost everything that went on there happened in the small foyer that served as a dining room, lounge and parlour.
There were usually around a dozen people, all crammed around the big kitchen table or sitting on the old sofa across the room. It would start, as always, with wine, and the roasted potato peelings that were his customary appetizer. A short while later, Phil would emerge from the kitchen with a couple of roast chickens, a pot or two of potatoes and green beans and a pan of his delicious bread sauce.
There was wine everywhere you looked and as the day went on and the empty bottles stacked up, the conversation got more raucous and more fun and more memorable. Phil was a quiet man and he was never the extroverted life and soul of the party. But he commanded respect. When he spoke, people listened. Everyone loved him.
It was his generosity that I most remember. We became quite friendly at one point and I’d go round and see him just to talk and chat. One afternoon the two of us sat in his front room. I can’t remember why we got talking about sheets but he understood – or misunderstood – that I didn’t have enough sheets at home. He offered me some of his own and got up to go to the cupboard and get some. I had to insist that I didn’t need his sheets. But I remember being struck that here was a man who would quite literally give you the shirt of his own back.
That generosity almost drove him to ruin in his early days, as he gave away to friends and acquaintances paintings he could have sold. When he met Ruth, he found a woman who was not only a rock to him as a wife and mother to his children, but also someone who brought some order to his life. He needed that and it gave him more freedom to paint.
And painting was his calling, one he could not give up. He painted with his hands and the toxins did him serious damage. He knew he was sick but he refused to let it detract from his work. The last time I saw him, about seven years ago, he was candid about his health problems. As we sat in his studio one afternoon, talking and drinking wine as the buzz of traffic and honking of horns fought to be heard over his customary jazz soundtrack, he acknowledged he was ill.
I halfheartedly tried to talk him into cutting back on the booze and obeying the doctor’s orders. But he just shrugged and held up his paint-stained hands. The doctor says the lead in the paint will kill me, he said with a shrug. But I can’t stop. All I want to do is paint.
Phil Kelly never did stop painting and when I look up from my computer at the painting he gave me when I left Mexico, or when I remember the canvases of volcanoes and green VW Beetle taxis and Mexico City statues and drunken men in cantinas, images so vivid that I can still recall them clearly after all those years, I am thankful he didn’t.
But I am even more thankful that I was able to call him a friend. The Painter might be dead. But his work and his memory will never leave me. Long live The Painter.
18 comments
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August 13, 2010 at 5:37 pm
Andrew Paxman
Thanks for posting this, Andy. Phil was a great talent, and his cityscapes of Mexico were like be-bop jazz. I wish I’d known him better.
August 16, 2010 at 8:43 pm
Julieta González
Thanks for sharing these memories Andy. We all cherish these luncheons and Phil’s generosity.
Lovely to hear from you. Long time no see…
Besos
Julieta
August 17, 2010 at 8:00 am
John Daly
Thank you Andy, a beautiful sketch of a wonderful man. The world has much less color with Phil’s passing, a huge loss to humanity. John
August 17, 2010 at 1:51 pm
Vanessa
Thanks Andy to put in words the feelings that all we knew Phil,we can feel. Kelly: wonderful man and a great painter.I say the same about my teacher:long live Phil!.
August 17, 2010 at 1:54 pm
vanessa Farfán
Thanks Andy to put in words the feelings that all we that knew Phil we can feel. I say the same about my teacher: Long live the painter!.
August 20, 2010 at 12:59 am
Arlette Garcia
Andrew gracias por compartir con nosotros , todos tristes por la pérdida.
August 20, 2010 at 6:43 pm
Elisabeth Malkin
Very moving — you have caught his essence.
August 24, 2010 at 12:53 pm
Hilda Valencia
El color y las memorias de una historia de nuestra Ciudad que Phil nos contó nuevamente haciendo volver nuestra mirada a lo conocido desconocido. Muy bello Andy
August 26, 2010 at 4:36 pm
Veronica Naranjo
bellisimo modo de describir a phil y su mundo!
September 1, 2010 at 7:13 pm
Kevin Rafter
Kevin Rafter’s radio documentary Painter Man on the life and work of Phil Kelly will be rebroadcast by Newstalk on Sunday 5 September to mark Phil’s passing last month. The documentary was recorded in 2007 in Mexico City and captures Phil taking about his childhood in Bray, his school days in Britain, his discovery of painting and the love he found in Mexico.
Newstalk – 6pm Sunday 5 September 2010.
The documentary will also be available as part of the listen-back facility on http://www.newstalk.ie
If anyone needs a CD version Kevin can be contacted at kevin.rafter@ireland.com
The documentary was supported by the Sound & Vision Fund of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland.
May 11, 2012 at 12:03 am
Guillermo
I bought a few paintings of Phil in the 90’s and I’m trying to buy again. Does anyone know how I can contact his wife, who I believe may be able to help me?
September 1, 2010 at 7:47 pm
Phil Kelly Radio Documentary to Air Again Sunday « Andrew Downie's Brazil Blog
[…] Entitled Painter Man, the program looks at Kelly’s life and work, and will be aired again as a tribute to the great man who passed away last month. (See my own tribute here.) […]
November 8, 2010 at 10:38 pm
Ruth Munguia
Radio programme Arts tonight in Ireland with Vincent Woods.
http://www.rte.ie/radio1/artstonight/2010-09-20.html
October 25, 2012 at 11:10 am
Nicki Bowers
So sad to hear the news of Phils death, now 2 years later, Iknew him at college and his exhibitions in Dublin – always so good to be in his warm company and the company of his marvellous work.
October 25, 2012 at 11:21 am
andrewdownie
He is sadly missed, Nicki….
December 17, 2012 at 2:12 pm
geoffreywrites
Nicki, Phil’s death shocked so many people. Phil had his studio in the garden of the house (6 Upper Church Street) in Bath when we were students (as you were) at Bath Spa Uni. Phil and I were on good terms, but not close friends. I heard no more of him for nearly twenty years. We were dining at Rick Stein’s where Phil had painted those superb murals. I wrote a poem with the same title as one of Phil’s exhibitions in London – An Irish Artist in Mexico. Then I began work on a memoir, published last year, of Bath Spa. While I was drafting it I learned of Phil’s death. I meant to send Phil a copy of the poem when it was published. But I didn’t. You don’t forget someone like Phil, a dedicated, talented and fulfilled artist. I’m so glad he found what he searched for so restlessly.
Geoffrey Heptonstall
March 8, 2019 at 4:08 pm
Rebeca Munguía
Jamas había leído que alguien se expresara de una manera tan bella de Phil, es increíble la huella que dejo en cada uno de nosotros. Y a pesar de que esta nota fue escrita hace ya casi diez años, me conmovio recordar todo eso.
March 11, 2019 at 10:19 am
andrewdownie
Gracias Rebeca! Realmente Phil era muy especial y nunca lo voy a olvidar como me toco’. Vc es parente de el?