Anthony Murphy gave up a steady career as a solicitor, and a daredevil hobby in extreme sports, to become an artist in southern France, writes Deirdre McQuillan
Thirteen years ago, Anthony Murphy, an Oxford-educated lawyer, abandoned a lucrative career and a smart apartment in Paris, where he was based, and moved to rural France with his wife, Sarah, to begin a more precarious life as a painter. Painting had become not merely a way of dealing with the boredom of legal work but also a compulsion, and the move was emboldened by a successful exhibition in London. Sarah was expecting their first child, Molly.
Their new home, a lovely old ramshackle house on a 30-acre estate, formerly an Ursuline convent, sat high on a plateau near Carcassonne, in the renowned Cathar region of southern France, an area that has inspired artists for centuries. "I thought it would save me and give me an identity I didn't have, and then I became its slave. It sent me scurrying to builders' yards, waging a war against rats in the attic that had been there for generations. But the first night we moved in, with the wind blowing, it felt fine," he says with a smile.
Ever since, Domaine des Jasses has remained a demanding, ongoing project, an artwork in itself. Eighty metres long, the house has an equally extensive history, stretching back nearly 1,000 years. The wind-whipped climate in this part of France explains the building's pointes en avant construction. "It's like a ship: the gable wall takes the force of the wind," says Murphy as we climb on to the extensive terracotta roof to take in a thrilling 360-degree panorama of distant hills and views across to the Pyrenees.
The house had been owned by a member of the riot police, needed a lot of work and had three rather unsavoury sitting tenants, problems that might have deterred the less determined. But Murphy reckoned that even if he sold only one painting, the family could live "meagrely" on the rent. Other aspects of the area touched deeper chords. "There is something about the wildness here that Ireland shares. The people here have a sense of humour like the Irish. Even the climate here belongs to Ireland and the Atlantic. It is a schizophrenic place to live, because it is really on the cusp of two worlds, the cushy Latin and the hard Celtic," he says as we walk through the fields around the house. That empathy is expressed in his work.
A strong artistic and rebellious streak, as well as a taste for adventure, runs in the Murphy family. Murphy's grandfather, on his retirement, at the age of 62, exchanged the security of a farm in the west of Ireland for southern Rhodesia, where he and his wife started a new life, growing maize and tobacco. Murphy's female ancestors, including his great-grandmother and grandmother, were landscape painters; his aunt Mary is a watercolourist, and his uncle, Richard Murphy, is the celebrated poet and author of a recent memoir, The Kick. The family's links with the west of Ireland go back several hundred years on his father's side.
A love of France was fostered by an enlightened teacher at school who introduced him to the Dordogne, cave paintings and 15-course lunches at the age of 12 - "all very intoxicating", he smiles. Now his three children attend local schools, speak fluent French and consider themselves Carcassonnais.
His resourceful wife, Sarah, a painter and accomplished pianist, is masterminding the decor of the house; she has been responsible for the very beautiful pigment-washed walls, in parchment, ochre and similar colours, which are adorned with tapestries and fine collections of drawings. She has also established a garden, planting olive trees and, along the avenue, lines of cypresses.
The restoration has had its bizarre, Heath Robinson side. We meet Lionel Connac, a former member of the French parachute regiment, who is plastering a wall. To avoid having to lug bags of plaster up flights of stairs to the fourth floor, he has created an ingenious counterweighting system. This involved erecting a pulley on the top floor, attaching the ropes to himself at one end and the bags to the other, then jumping out of the window, to send the bags upwards; it is a terrifying procedure that he carries out about 20 times. "He would have been strawberry jam if he'd made a mistake," says Murphy, dryly.
The current restoration includes the creation of an orangerie in a former barn and the renovation of one complete floor as the family's living quarters.
The space has allowed him to have a winter and summer studio on either side of the house, and in their paint-filled chaos lie the fruits of his most recent works: landscapes, portraits and interiors in pastels and oils that will be dispatched to Dublin for his first solo Irish show, at Jorgensen Fine Art, which opens on Friday. "It is like coming home in a way," he says.
As he spends a lot of time at his father's house in Connemara, many paintings are of Ireland - with storm-washed landscapes and dark interiors - although these are counterpointed by the lusher, more intensely coloured landscapes of southern France. "Being here simplifies my work. There are not too many distractions. I just like a wet brush and, currently, a bit of Leonard Cohen in the background." Occasionally he is there on his own, "and it feels as if the world has slipped from one's grasp. It is lovely".
Life, he says, is one brush stroke at a time, and on the canvas of his own life he has had his share of shade and light, having at one point overcome an addiction to heroin. At the age of l5 he won an Emmy for the leading role in the BBC production of Tom Brown's Schooldays and became an overnight star. "It was great fun, but a life as an actor is a lot of waiting for the bus and a few moments getting on board," he says.
In his 20s he married, moved to Ireland, bought a kiln and a pottery wheel and became an "obsessed potter" and aerial photographer, cruising around the west in a microlight aircraft. Daredevil exploits included jumping off the highest bridge in the world, but after one microlight escapade over Dublin he was arrested and fined. He was later brought to earth in every sense when he hit a pylon and narrowly escaped with his life. But the perspective of flying over Connemara gave him an appreciation of form, and in many paintings there is a sense of a view from above.
His first exhibition was in 1991. Since then he has had nine solo shows, in London, France and San Francisco. He also had group shows in Ireland, Canada, the US and France. His most recent was in London, in November 2003.
In his paintings there is fine observation, deep sensuality and great playfulness with colour; he shares the same self-deprecating humour and honesty as his uncle, who will open the exhibition. "His painting," writes Richard Murphy, "embodies and transfigures the tensions, pain and glory of his time . . . The rebel within the lawyer, the addict within the survivor, the rootless visionary brought through art and suffering to earth."
He puts it best himself. "I like to feel that a person is more able to live a life after they have seen a painting of mine. It's an idea from the Buddhist understanding of art, that it must be noble, and the best art does that."
As we drive down the sun-dappled roads back to Carcassonne, with the hazy blue hills in the distance, I tell him that it seems a charmed existence for an artist. But, with a wry laugh, he says that "seems" is the right word and, quoting Pasternak, adds: "There is no paradise on earth."
Anthony Murphy's exhibition is at Jorgensen Fine Art, Dublin 2, from Friday until September 17th. See www.jorgensenfineart.com