Loneliness
The tang of blackberries, Wet with rain, On the hilltop.
In the silence of the prison, The clear whistle of the train., The happy whisperings of lovers, To the lonely one.
Brendan Behan, 1950.
What is a painters’ interest in a poet? What is a poets’ interest in imagery? Are they inimitably aligned?
In “Brendan Behan’s Sideboard” Paul Housley, 2026, we see a man sat in solitude. Behan, a troublesome, disruptive figure from 20th Century Ireland who, when asked, offered up that success made him realise, “I go to better beds but I sleep less well.” This incentive to depict intimate moments that demonstrate a cry for quietness is a device that draws on Housley’s own background, and embodies the overall ethos of the singular, lonely detached working -class imaginative figure. Though Behan is depicted in a genteel setting, the loneliness and torment of the innermost thinker is a well-rehearsed trope for Housley. Perhaps this epitomises a version of characters with intellect, but not access, that can enter more salubrious conditions in word and image.
Behan, born in 1923, -Irish Republican, poet, playwright, and short story writer - learned native Irish in prison. This laced his language with vivid satire, revealing the human detritus that surrounds capital punishment. 1950s literary critic Kenneth Tynan commented: "If the English hoard words like misers. Behan sends them out on a spree, ribald, flushed, and spoiling for a fight." Behan’s quote that, “They took away our language, … but they could never harness our tongues” resonates with the painters’ language of freedom of image making, scene setting, narrative disruption, co-option and capricious illusion.
Secondary Classical asks if the class system robbed 20th Century promising youth of the classical education of the upper class. And if they had been offered an equivalent knowledge base would a Behan or a Housley, self-taught for the most part, although he went through some of the usual stages of a modern education- be listened to as a classically trained alumnus is? Or perhaps, more interestingly, are these characters, real and imagined, actually the real voices, precisely because they were denied the classical, and they found their own voices and imagery: personal, political, resonant and completely (non -textbook) individual.
This notion of self-education – Behan’s in prison, Housley’s on his imaginative path -demonstrates how art can act as a pathway into further erudition. Housley often alludes to the tropes of a classical education. It fuels an instinctive desire to bridge a gap in knowledge – a belief there is a space where pure thought and philosophical musing can bring if not a sense of peace but a stoic acceptance of life’s absurdities, unfairness and vicissitudes. That the real outliers’ education is facing and knowing oneself and accepting what you find – self-reflection, the pursuit of knowledge.
Each artwork is an amplification of a moment, where emotions are distilled and heightened. Paintings take the temperature of the room and situation and presents them back to the viewer in a detached manner. The artist invites the viewer to share his bemused semi -detachment from various possible meanings of the work. This work is full of unknown thoughts, guessed meanings. Everything is deliberately vague because to be alive is to be in flux. Always a sly confession that the intention and questions of the artist have ultimately eluded them again. It is in many ways an acceptance of the complete impossibility of every really knowing oneself. The artists’ ultimate confession is, “I can’t be sure”.
– Christabel Stewart, 2026