Carl Hickey - Upon the top deck

Carl hickey

How did you get into painting?

What happened was, I was in school, and I didn't want to go to college, and I was asleep in my LCVP, which is a class for your career after school. I was asleep and one of my teachers came over and woke me up and said, “you should fill out your CAO”. I didn't want to go to college, even though I knew I was smart enough to go, I just didn't have the ambition for education. I was doing a lot of graffiti at the time, so she suggested I fill out a PLC. So, I filled out a PLC in art because I knew a lot of people who had done that before. I went for the interview, had fuck all drawings, and I wasn't good enough at art because I didn't do it in school, but they liked me in the interview, so they gave me a chance. When I went in, I thought it was going to be dog shit and I ended up liking it. Long story short I ended up acing that course and going to NCAD. I wanted to do sculpture, I had done woodwork and one of my teachers had told me I should do sculpture because I'm good with my hands. So, I clung to that, but when I went into first year another one of my teachers said I was good at painting so I should be a painter. Since then, I stuck with that. That was about five years ago.

I find a lot of the times people who go into art school end up changing medium for whatever reason and end up doing something completely different than what they had originally planned.

It switches over all the time. I just remember clinging on to whatever they told me I was good at. When I started to like what I was doing, and people were telling me I'm good at it and you didn't know that you are good at it, you latch on to it.

Gives you the motivation.

I'm good at this, painting just feels right for me. Maybe I could do sculpture again, but for the time being painting just seems right for me for the foreseeable future.

 Did you always work with oil or did you start with acrylic?

We started with watercolour. They never teach you how to paint in the PLC modules, they just expected everyone knew how to paint. They go over basics and all, but I remember they taught us how to use watercolours but not anything else. Acrylic is straight forward, I think. I never used oil in the PLC course before. It was after the summer of the first year I bought a set of oils in a charity shop in Clondalkin Village. I didn't have any other paints, so I thought I'd just try it. I had white spirits as well, didn't have any normal mediums. I just tried it then and now I switch between oils and acrylics, but I've been painting in oils for the past year.

 I saw your latest show, the concept was very interesting. Can you tell me how you got that idea? Or the inspiration behind it?

I remember when I was younger, I used to always paint morbid themes around where I'm from in Clondalkin. I used to just look that up on Google, the word Clondalkin. You used to always get the same images of Garda and antisocial behavior to the point where it was grim, very forensic stuff. It was good subject matter nonetheless, but it was very tunneled. I would get caught in this theme, that I haft to paint crime scenes, or the Garda. Then eventually I kind of got sick of that and I started using my self-imagery and videos. Because we would always film stuff and I think that comes from skateboarding as well. We're always documenting and not just the skate tricks or whatever, we're always filming someone being an idiot or someone locked out of it. Running around the streets smashing shit up. I enjoy capturing the little things, such as people sitting down for a pint or having a conversation at a bus stop. There is always something to see in Dublin, just haft to be on the ball with your phone to capture it. It suits me because I'm always around and it's a good theme because it doesn't end, it's a good way to work. For example, I've been documenting the same guy from a bike shop in Inchicore, and I have about five videos of him, and three paintings done so far. So, I might do another painting of him next week.

I sometimes find myself inspired by the paintings, whether I'm on the bus or my bike, I see something strange or interesting on the streets, and I'm like, I should take a picture and send this to Carl.

People are sending me photos all the time. As I was saying before, about the grimmer stuff, people tend to latch onto it and send me videos like that, and I'm like, Nah here, send me a picture of an auld nanny or something.

Something a little bit more light-hearted.

Yeah, yeah, I'm trying to be good.

Growing up in Clondalkin, and just Ireland in general, how has that been as an artist?

Well, I have only been in this art game for so long. I did my PLC in 2016, so I don't have any of that real educational side of art. The college I went to, NCAD, teaches yah how to think, they don't teach yah what way to draw or paint. Being an artist is good, but I feel a lot of artists are hard to get along with. When someone is just an artist, and they go to art college, and I don't know them outside of that, I find it hard to get along with them. That's sometimes my own fault as well. I find better comfort with people who are outside of art. Like I get along with skaters very well, and people who make music. I'm more into music than I am into art, realistically. That's my motivation. I love music way more than I love painting really, but I can physically better myself through painting, whereas I just listen to music.

Going back to the skating, when did you start skating?

I started skating in 2012, and then was always consistently skating, as everyone is around that age. I was thirteen then and had a good group of solid people skating and as you get older you notice there are maybe two skaters out of the group who stick with it and the rest fall off into different categories. They always go down similar routes, graffiti writers and artists. I don't know what the story is with that, but it seems to be the way it goes. You even see with the younger skaters, going down the same route that we went.

It's funny, like your friends either skate forever or they fall off to like some sort of scene, or they just kind of find something else they're more interested in.

 I have a new board and haven't been skating. I've had it for six months and only skated it twice. Need to get some board slides on it or something, make it look like I was actually skating.

Scratch it up just a little bit.

Yeah all on my own in the dark.

So you've been painting for a few years now, who would you say is your favorite painter?   

I’ve always loved Pat Curran's work, he's an artist that works around very working-class areas. Sean O’Rourke would be someone very similar to him as well. Eithne Jordan would be another favorite of mine. Even going back to older Irish painters, Jack B Yeats, I love his style, and I’ve just always loved Edward Hopper and his style of paintings because it's not trying to be anything, it's just his own.

If you didn't end up painting, what do you think you would have been doing?

Speaker 2 I'd probably be about to get locked up or something like all my other mates. Honest to God, yeah, because I wouldn't imagine I’d be skating and taking that too seriously. Probably still doing graffiti, but now I can't do it because if I get caught, I’m ruining something good. I have responsibilities now so I can't.

I always loved that question of just like, so, if you didn't ever do this thing that turned out to be good for you…

I can't last in a job, with my attention span, doing something I don't like. This is the only thing that I can do that works well with self-control, and financially if I wasn't such a bad spender I'd be doing very well. I'm just trying to stay out of trouble.

Yeah it's hard going sometimes. You've recently just graduated from NCAD, what are your plans now?

Shows and shows. I just had a solo show in Liberty's Ink, which was kind of just a fun thing. There are plans for next year. I won't say too much about that but there is a big plan for next year. Also have some pieces in a show in Brooklyn now. Lots of things going on and I look forward to the future. It's good to be out of education, doing five years of that and being released into the wild as a real artist is a test I suppose, if anything. So, it's exciting stuff. 

Do you think you'll end up staying in Ireland or will you export yourself like the rest of the Irish artists do?

That's a good question. I think I will stay here if I can, until the point where my job takes me elsewhere. I love Ireland and I don't like any other country, but I haven't travelled a lot so I wouldn't know really. I couldn't live in Barcelona or Germany because I couldn't live anywhere that it’s normal for people to constantly party. Ireland is a drinking country but the scenes over there are crazy and I'm too crazy for that, I'd fall into it too easy. So, unless my job takes me there, like if I get a residency, I'll go. Now I have a residency in the Dean Arts, so I'm going to be here until next June anyway. I will be applying for other residencies in other places so if I do get one, I’ll be travelling.

Yeah, that's the best, getting in those residencies. It's a good way to travel, you know.

You get paid as well, which is great.

Get to see the world, do your art, free studios.

The only thing is I'll have to find new people to paint, because there’s nothing like the Irish people to be painting, you know what I mean, they’re so ugly.

Any shoutouts you want to give to people?

 Shout out to the lads, we out here grinding. From the boys running skateboard companies to the ones releasing music, and mostly shout out to me ma, shout out to the single mother. Look at your boi. That's the only one I got.