I was playing under-13s football, got concussed, and brought to hospital. I was there for only two days and one night, and it happened over that period of time. In the hospital. I never told anyone for 28 years.
Tony Crosbie is recalling the occasion in his childhood when he was sexually molested by a priest an experience which has shadowed his life and is now one of the key elements in forming his highly personal and uncompromising art. It s never gone, it takes your innocence away, he continues. You re always hiding, and you re always asking why? . I was violent as a kid and I was wondering why I was violent. It s been pointed out to me since that this stuff has to be dealt with, and maybe that s the way I was dealing with it, striking back at people who weren t the main players.
His chilling encounter in the hospital wasn t Crosbie s only experience of sexual abuse, however, the combined effect being a still lingering legacy of fear and loathing in his adult life.
I do know that I m very protective of my own children, he admits. I don t like anyone babysitting, for instance, and it s difficult even to let them play games, but you can t put a noose around their necks to keep an eye on them. I find it difficult to watch programmes where sexual abuse has been identified or reading papers about it. It makes me feel sick. I feel vomitous. In certain paintings I ve done, too, I ve painted an image of someone being physically sick.
I remember people from the Goldenbridge case on television, and one woman said Some of us are here to tell a story, but some of us didn t make it. That s how sexual abuse can torment the life out of people, and can turn them suicidal. I remember meeting another man who sexually abused me, met him on the street just recently, and the minute I saw him I psychologically shrunk . . .
Crosbie s childhood was also marked by his father s spousal abuse, leading to an escalation of his own problems.
I started drinking at 13 and I thought it was the in thing to do, he explains, but I now know that it was indirectly a form of escapism because of the abuse that had happened to me, and was happening. If I had one pint, I d want more and more. I was married at 17, had four kids by 22, and the relationship was over at 23. She was 15, we were pushed into a church at nine o clock at night, no white dress or wedding reception. It was all Get them in there quick, and out just as quick . That happened to a lot of couples back then, the early 70s. It s laughable now, but it certainly wasn t at the time.
Nowadays, Crosbie is living with his partner of 17 years, Noleen, and their own two children, the four from his former marriage having gradually drifted back to their mother . He is also searching for a studio to replace his current work station, the kitchen in his Blanchardstown abode.
When I m painting, he says, everything goes and I sometimes just throw paint at the canvas and it hits the ceiling and the floor. Because I use a lot of reds, for anger, it s like a slaughterhouse! When I have time in my mind to contemplate what I m doing, though, I bring the easel out the back and then throw the paint. When I m not with it, it happens the way it happens. I need to give Noleen and the kids some space, as well as have my own space to work.
Does he see his art as a form of therapy?
I don t know, he replies. I ve a couple of paintings called Hands Of The Abuser and people say the hands are like clasps, but what happens to children in an abuse situation is not normal, so I m not trying to make the hands normal. Sometimes I don t have any hand or part in what s happening in my work. It just happens. I ll have thought of an image I want to paint, and it just goes from there.
Expressing himself through paint was a relatively recent development in Tony s life.
I m a self-taught artist, apart from a few art classes with a good friend, he explains. I m in recovery from alcohol for about four years and I m painting three and a half years. It stopped me going crazy. I always liked it in school, but I finished there at 13 to get out and get a job. When I began recovery, I just began drawing, tried pastels, and moved to oils. My first exhibition had 32 paintings and I d no funding from anyone I even framed them myself. I m not working, I don t drink, smoke, or go out socially so much, but it s a new life for me and it s engrossing.
Engrossing for the viewer, too, which is why this comparative newcomer has already achieved at least one notable coup in his attempts to break into the Dublin art world.
I ve come from nowhere, I guess, but the Hugh Lane Gallery have bought four of my paintings, and that s the second major gallery in Ireland, he notes. I might take some well-known artists ten years before a gallery like that might buy their work. They bought it from a second viewing of my first exhibition, after it had moved from The Stoneleaf Gallery in Stoneybatter to the Fire Station Gallery in Buckingham Street.
We have bought four pieces by Tony Crosbie as part of our Contemporary Section, Barbara Dawson, director of the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art, confirms. His work is now in trust for the city. I was particularly struck by a piece depicting a chair with a noose overhanging it. It shows great use of space and, although there is no human presence in it, it shows great human feeling. The execution of the work is very interesting and also has complex narrative. Tony Crosbie is rather unique in Irish terms and he is part of no movement, no-ism, but there is a certain lingering effect of expressionism in his work.
Whatever about the impact of his intense, confrontational painting on the viewer, Tony Crosbie s work represents an extraordinary psychological release for the artist himself.
I m like a tourist now in my own city, he explains. I ve opened my eyes, I m going into galleries and museums now that I never dreamt of going into previously. It s a new lease of life. It s amazing, but an awful lot of this city lives in a box. People live, work, socialise, and die in that box and never see the outside.
He passionately believes in the ability of the human spirit to triumph over adversity, however.
If I didn t believe in that I might have taken the rope option by now, he confesses, and, unfortunately, some people take that option. I want to live. There s a life out there to be lived and my art is showing me a new way. I don t know if I ll always paint the way I do now but, when I think of art, I think of intensity. I ve images at home that are screaming at me from the walls, and I m looking at them. I m not looking at them in a poor me way. I m looking at them to see if they convey a message.
That life cannot, and should not, destroy you?
No, it shouldn t. I m addressing the issue, confronting it, and people who see it can identify with it. If they don t, then at least they ll get some sort of insight that it s real. Everything on the canvas is real, has happened to me, is from me.
People who are in recovery from alcoholism and drug addiction, have come up to me and said they can really connect with it. I ve had people start crying, people who went Sweet Jesus! , and people who stopped coming to my house because of the issues I m dealing with.
I don t know if there are any people in Dublin today who don t know someone who s affected by alcohol, heroin, or sexual abuse or violence. There are an awful lot of sick people just trying to get well. n