Last year, Breon O'Casey's 70th birthday present to himself was to give up making jewellery, an activity that had supported him for 30 or so years. He had already given up weaving when, as he put it "my legs began to give out on me." That leaves him with painting and sculpture, more than enough, you might think, to occupy his waking hours. His parallel mastery of art and craft, and his considerable reputation as a jeweller, may have inhibited his standing as a painter: fine art snobbery still runs deep. But that is, belatedly, changing, and Breon O'Casey, a beautifully produced, lavishly illustrated book that surveys the full, impressive range of his activities - with texts by Brian Fallon and O'Casey himself, should help.
The son of Sean O'Casey, Breon was born in London and spent much of his youth in Devon. After National Service he went to art school. Instinctively drawn to St Ives in Cornwall after seeing a television documentary about local painter Alfred Wallis, he has lived there since, initially working as assistant to sculptors Denis Mitchell and Barbara Hepworth.
"I am an abstract painter", he says of himself, closer in spirit to still life than landscape, before accurately acknowledging the increasing influence of certain facets of landscape, "landscape as pattern". All his work - painting, jewellery, sculpture and weaving - confirms that he is highly attuned to the forms, colours, textures and patterns around him. And Brian Fallon sums up an essential aspect of his approach when he says of him that: "He loves the humanising imprint . . . of the individual hand, as opposed to the `duplicating' character of the machine."
Aidan Dunne is Art Critic of The Irish Times
