I often wonder if I am trying to capture and hold on to a memory, to stop this world for a minute, artist and master printmaker James McCreary tells Brian McAvera
Brian McAvera: James, you were born in Dublin in 1944. Who were your parents, what was it like growing up in Dublin in the ’40s and ’50s, and do you think your work was in any way shaped by your early childhood?
James McCreary: I was born on the North Circular Road, just up the road from where the Graphic Studio is now. My father was a steel erector in Smith and Pearson’s. We lived in a little house in St Joseph St. The cattle market was nearby and every Wednesday the cows, with horns on, were driven down the North Circular Road and there was cow shit everywhere. It was known as the Golden Mile. We lived there for six years. I was very happy. There was no electricity. It was beautiful at night with the gas lights. Every Sunday I was brought to Mass in Gardiner Street church. I loved looking at the paintings in the dark and the gloom, with the candles and the big painting over the altar of the Virgin Mary going up to heaven – even though I couldn’t believe in God, even at that age. At night when I’d be lying in bed, the crack lines in the plaster of the ceiling fascinated me. My mother bought the Beano and Dandy for me every week. (I didn’t find out that I was dyslexic until I was thirty!)…
