Mike O'Toole is an artist with a difference. He's a professional photographer with a "thing" about food, and his first exhibition as a solo artist will be opened tonight in the Dunamaise Arts Centre, Portlaoise, by Darina Allen.
He concedes he's fascinated by just about everything to do with food. He once stopped a man on a motorcycle on the Cork-Limerick road who was carrying a mammoth cabbage about three feet in diameter on the back of his bike.
"I was so preoccupied with taking pics of this thing that I forgot to talk to the rider and he just took off in disgust." Later that day he saw the cabbage surreally on display in a butcher's shop. His attachment to his subject is reflected in the 26 entries that comprise the exhibition. It will be on show at the arts centre all week before transferring to the Kitchen restaurant across the road where it may be seen throughout May. The pieces vary from food on and off the table to landscapes and even chefs in the kitchen. Mr O'Toole, from Prosperous, Co Kildare, graduated from Kevin Street technical college in Dublin with a diploma in photography in the mid-1980s. It was a difficult time to get a job in Ireland, so he went to London where he spent the next seven years learning his trade as a food photographer.
In London he met his wife, Anne Marie, from Enniscorthy. A graduate of the National College of Art and Design, she had become disillusioned with art and was working as a chef, initially in Covent Garden, later in a popular restaurant in Hampstead "run by women". Their fate was sealed, says Mr O'Toole, when they discovered they each had a copy of Robert Freson's book, The Taste of France. "She was interested in the fact that I was into food." She became a professional stylist and was invaluable when it came to setting up good food pictures.
Mike and Anne Marie travelled around together - Europe, the Far East and North America - soaking up everything they could on the aesthetics of food.
They have two daughters, Sally, aged two, and four-month-old Hazel. He is convinced food photography has an inbuilt philosophy. "It's got to look like you want to eat it - appetising." He and Anne Marie eschew fancy table settings or anything that distracts the eye from the main subject. And there's no question of using artificial sprays or colourings to make the food look better for the camera. "It's just like cooking; you have to get the best ingredients - usually organic - and present them in a simple way."
Another Portlaoise exhibition, The Living Earth at the County Hall by artist Fiona Marron, will be opened tonight by the Minister for Finance, Mr McCreevy.