Markey Robinson (1918-99)

The Irish expressionist artist, landscape painter and sculptor Markey Robinson was born in Belfast in 1918. An avid reader of fine art books as a child, he trained for a time at the Belfast College of Art. It was then time to earn a living. Robinson became a merchant seaman, and later a welder, but his main passion remained painting. Sadly, the next thirty years were tough. Despite showing his paintings in a number of exhibitions, it wasn't until the 1980s that he achieved significant commercial success as an artist.

Now noted as the foremost Irish Primitive* painter, Markey Robinson began exhibiting his works in 1942 when three of his paintings - Autumn Landscape, Boulogne and I...