ROY WALLACE
ABOUT
Roy Wallace is well known throughout Ireland and Internationally for painting Irish characters and pictures of the Old Wild West. Now in his mid fifties he has decided to paint subjects which are ‘more personal’. Roy describes his recent paintings as ‘surrealistic’ each tellinga story based on a curious juxtaposition of characters.
‘Born in Belfast’s Dockland, my uncle who was in the Merchant Navy, used to bring each time he returned home, stacks of American Comics which were shafts of sunlight in what was grey, austere postware early 50’s world. These provided early inspiration and gave me the impetus and interest in art, although I only took it up full time in about 1974. I always had a talent for drawing so it was just a matter of honing and developing it to a professional degree. Art-wise my comfort zone is from 1920’s to the 1960’s, as the buck of my reference material covers these decades. I prefer the surreal school of art. Tho’ in my time I have dealt with golf, fieldsports, shooting, Victorian life, old cottage life, horce rocing, Irish life and music and American West. Though I much prefer doing what I do now as I’ve just about had enough of the 19th Century. About the only influence I feel were the early illustrators of ‘mad’ magazine of the late 50’s or earl 60’s. I simply try to come up with a picture that never has existed before in a professional manner.’