He Didn't look nervous but Christy Moore said he was "totally freaked" when he stood in front of a packed auditorium in the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art earlier this week. Still, he braved facing "all you lovers of paint" in order to open an exhibition of Brian Maguire's work.
"Brian has told me there's no need to be nervous," he joked. "I took my drugs for half six. I was totally relaxed at half six. But now (at 7.40 p.m.) I'm totally freaked."
All joking aside, Moore, looking the picture of health, is "feeling fine now", he says. "I sing every day . . . I'm working each day. I will be recording again." Although there are no more live performances, he is still writing songs, but, he adds, "I do miss it".
He has known Brian Maguire "intimately for 15 years" and he owns a number of his paintings. "I bought them when he was cheap," he jokes. "I'm still cheap," says Maguire, quick as a flash. The two of them grin for the photographer.
"I love looking at his pictures and he's also a good friend," Moore says when he officially opens the show, which will run until Sunday, March 26th. There were representatives from all walks of life at the opening and they came from all over. Delia Given, a sculptor from London, now living in Dunloe in Co Donegal, is chatting to her friend Pauline Twomey, a psychiatrist. Rita Hughes, a director of Hughes Book Shops, is recalling the day last year when the Duke of Kent presented her with a gold medal in recognition of her fund-raising for the RNLI. "It's at home in a box," she says.
Daniel Dultzin, the Mexican ambassador, is present, still glowing from his New Year holiday in the jungle. We forgot to ask him if he went native. Pamela Hill, a sculptor from Rathmines, is espousing the layered look with a series of "earth colours" draped about her person.
Steyn Mattews, a visitor from South Africa, is the only tall, tanned individual here. Sporting a red anorak and a ruck-sack on his back, he sits beside his sister, artist Greta McMahon, and her husband, Bryan McMahon, an engineer. And he's her publicist too: "she does very abstract, expressionistic pieces and I won't charge you anything for that information!" he says. Also present are young lovers, who expect to marry on Easter Sunday in Belleek Castle in Co Mayo: artist Laura Gannon and Laurence O'Hana, an international businessman - who is suitably dressed for the part in a pin-striped suit.
John Lonergan, governor of Mountjoy Prison, says Maguire's work with prisoners has "been tremendous for years and years. It's been very therapeutic and invaluable." After the speeches, Eddie Cahill (brother of the infamous Martin, aka The General), a painter with a long, thin pony tail down his back, presents one of his paintings to Maguire on behalf of all the prisoners in Ireland.