HORSES FOR COURSES

INTERVIEW:Painter Paddy Lennon has found the ideal location for his studio - the stable yard from where, along with his wife Jo Kimmins, he runs a riding school

SOME ARTISTS SEEM to have found the ideal set up for their studios -­if anywhere could ever be said to be ideal for that place where you wrestle regularly with a blank canvas, with a half-finished painting, or with that tyrannical fear that maybe this time you've forgotten how to do it. I don't know if Paddy Lennon is prone to these particular anxieties, although as an artist, and as a human being, I don't doubt that he is. Lennon's studio is near Rosslare in Co Wexford; set in the corner of a stable yard, amidst rolling farmland, and at the top of a lane that ends with the sea.

Lennon's studio occupies one of the stables, the rest being taken up by the horses and ponies that inhabit Liosín Riding School. The riding school is run by Paddy's wife, Jo Kimmins. They set up the school when Lennon swapped 12 of his paintings with the owner of another riding school for all her ponies, their saddles and bridles, and some of her jumps - but that's getting ahead of the story.

Lennon, who paints abstract landscapes and seascapes, as well as making amazing drawings of horses, was born into a family of 12, in Dublin in the 1950s. Leaving school at 16, he headed, like so many others at the time, to London, where he did, as he puts it, "a series of awful jobs". He also "lied my way into college and a grant", by telling them he had six honours in his Leaving Cert. Whether or not they believed in the number of honours he was claiming, his talent as an artist should have convinced them anyway.

"The thing was," he says, "I was so unhappy in England, but in Ireland I would have had no opportunities or chances."

He had always drawn as a child, "when you've got 12 kids, you'll do anything to keep them quiet," he muses. "I loved college, but when I finished, that was it. I couldn't afford to go on to the Royal Academy." Neither did he make art for a while. "I wasn't painting when I met Jo," he remembers. "I couldn't think of a thing to paint, my head was full of things, and people were pulling me in all directions. Some were saying that painting was dead, that no one was drawing any more."

A trip to Mexico with Jo changed all that, however.The plan had been to drive from New England to Tierra del Fuego, but by the time they got to Guatemala, Jo was pregnant, and it seemed wisest to come home. After a stay in Dublin, they headed out to Connemara where, between different jobs, Lennon ended up with a part as Richard Harris's stand-in, in The Field. Sitting in the sunny stable yard in the thick of the Wexford countryside, talking to Lennon over a cup of tea, with the fields stretching out around us, it's easy to imagine him taking on the role -­ not simply as a stand-in -­ he just seems right for the part.

Filming is boring, he tells me, and so to pass the time, he started drawing. "I did a drawing of Richard, and he went mad for it, he thought it was brilliant. He got me to do drawings of Brenda Fricker and John Hurt, and then he wouldn't let me work on set any more. Said he didn't want me to damage my hands. So I was paid to hang out and talk to him, and draw."

Harris arranged for Lennon to have an exhibition in New York, and that got him making art again in earnest. Lennon's work is now divided into two strands. There are painted abstracts, that have hints of the land and the sea, the colour palette changing with influence and mood - warmer colours from a visit to Spain, and fluid blues and greens, greys, purples and browns from Ireland. "I went to Spain to try to get away from the grey, but the colours are darker there because you're trying to get away from the light." He says that it will take "a couple of years for things to come through in his work", from travels and experiences. "People will look at a painting and say 'where's that?', and I'll have to tell them it's from out of my head."

The other strand to his work is his finely executed charcoal drawings of horses. Jo had had a thoroughbred called Three Heads, who had died and, working partly from photographs, partly from memory, Lennon had taken himself into the studio, and drawn the horse as a gift for her. "I didn't even like that particular horse," remembers Lennon, "I couldn't ride at the time, and I was terrified of him." But the drawing turned out incredibly well (so well in fact, that when Lennon editioned it as a print, Aidan O'Brien bought one as a present for John Magnier).

Jo had no idea what he was working on. And what did she do when she saw it? "She cried." The original Three Heads now hangs in the family's house, and is absolutely compelling. Alongside it are ranged a series of Lennon's new paintings. Lennon is the first to admit how problematic horses can be in art. We go into the studio to examine some of the drawings. "It's very easy to get bad sentiment in a horse drawing, because they are sentimental animals." The drawings are difficult, he says. "It's intense hard work, and then you can f*** them up when they're almost finished." He will work on several, and then relax by painting again. It's always one or the other, as charcoal dust gets into paint and makes it impossible to do the two together.

As a person, and as a painter, he also admits to being restless. When we meet, he is working on an exhibition to be staged at Greenacres in Wexford, a two-man show with the sculptor John Behan. The exhibition is to coincide with the Wexford Opera Festival. "I want to do completely new work for it," he says. "As far as I'm concerned, I've got about three at the moment," and we cast our eyes around the studio, full of paintings, drawings, objects -­ there is a sheep's skull, drawings of horses, half -finished canvasses, and all the matter of an artist's studio. Outside, the sound of hooves clop past, together with the excited yelps of small children at pony camp. "I rework and rework the paintings. The reason those paintings are hanging in the house is to get they away from myself so I won't attack them again."

We go back out into the sunshine, and tack the horses up for a ride along the beach and to the pub. Riding the horses, alive and excited on the strand, you feel some of the energy and power that Lennon captures so exactly in his drawings, for as well as the shapes of their outline, their muscles and their veins, he also manages to put a sense of feeling into the lines and shapes. And looking around, out to where the sea meets the sky and, ahead of us, where sand becomes fields, I start to recognise hints of the light and patterns of the paintings. It might not be the perfect place to work, but it certainly comes pretty close.

Paddy Lennon and John Behan are at Greenacres, Selskar, Wexford, until November 2nd. www.greenacres.ie and www.paddylennon.net. Liosín Riding Stables: www.liosinridingcentre.comWORDS GEMMA TIPTON

PHOTOGRAPHY ERIC LUKE

INTERVIEW