A teacher in St Gerard's in Bray believed Louis Le Brocquy to be an artist long before he himself had the slightest inkling of it

I grew up on Zion Road, Rathgar, Dublin, but at the age of nine was sent as a boarder to St Gerard's in Bray. For its time, it was a reasonably humane school. All but one of the nine or so masters were converts to Catholicism and I found them rather a strange lot. One of the masters has, however, remained in my mind. S.D. Collinwood was the nephew of Lewis Carroll and a very remarkable man as far as I was concerned. He believed me to be an artist before I had the slightest inkling of it. There was no tuition in painting or drawing in the school, but he encouraged me.

I didn't find it very interesting because in those days one was simply imitating adult paintings. There was no room for an inner life and one didn't draw as a child or young person. I wasn't particularly academic, but I did all right throughout school. When I came to leave, I was earmarked for the oil business and I went to work for my grandfather who owned the Greenmount Oil Company in Harold's Cross. I started working in the lab there in 1934.

The work was fine but during my time there I fell in love with a number of painters - mostly from reproductions - and I started studying in the National and Municipal Galleries. I particularly enjoyed Velazquez, Rembrandt and Vermeer. At first, I just looked at them and read anything I could find about them.

At a certain point, however, I began to paint - something of which my grandfather couldn't possibly approve. My mother Sybill, who was immersed in the literary life of Dublin, encouraged me immensely. It was she who was eventually responsible for giving me the chance to get out of the oil business and in 1938 I sailed away to London.

I studied systematically in the National and Tate Galleries in London, at the Louvre in Paris and in Geneva, where the Prado collection was on view. It had been sent there by the Spanish government to safeguard it against Franco's troops, who were about to take Madrid.

By then, I was living in the south of France, but war broke out and it became impracticable to stay. I managed to get back to Ireland at the beginning of 1940.

Here, I was influenced by Prof Erwin Schroedinger, who had been brought from Austria to Ireland by Dev to escape the Holocaust and become head of the new Institute for Advanced Studies. He was a great physicist who had worked closely with Einstein and had an interest in genetics. I attended a series of lectures he gave and did a drawing of him alongside his potential genetic self. I ventured to give it to him. He was delighted with it and wanted to use it on the cover of his book What is Life?, but his publishers, quite understandably, refused. He gave me his friendship, and his insights into human presence and individual consciousness have had a profound effect on my work.

I remember his insistence that consciousness is a singular of which the plural is unknown. What appears to be plurality is simply a repetition of the same thing.

One never shakes off the old masters, but as I progressed, I moved on to all sorts of influences, including the inescapable Picasso. The painter who meant most to me, though, - and who interested himself most in my work - was Francis Bacon. We did, however, hold very different views.

It was very difficult to make a living at painting in Ireland. One could only survive by painting pub murals around the country and designing sets and costumes for Jimmy O'Dea and Fred O'Donovan.

After the war, I was what one may describe as "`discovered" by the London critics and by Charles Gimpel, who was starting up his London Gallery. I had my first show there in 1947 and I've been with them ever since.

I think being an artist is a calling. The fever must run high in order to sustain an occupation that is so little related to earning a living. Even though there are greater opportunities for artists nowadays, one needs to be extremely committed to bring oneself through extremely boring and discouraging times. There are moments when things grind to a halt, when you are deprived of vision and you can't see your way forward.

Artists cannot wait for inspiration. As a Polish friend of mine used to say : " there is such a thing as inspiration but it doesn't come on the pillow - it comes when you are working at your easel."

Louis Le Brocquy, one of Ireland's greatest artists, was in conversation with Yvonne Healy. He was recently conferred with an honorary degree by DCU.