Brian Flynn

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Brian Flynn, "Recognized,” 2020

oil and photo transfer on linen, 72" x 96"

Brian Flynn’s paintings are dark and grainy, hovering between documentation and obfuscation. Men are portrayed in silhouette, their faces obscured, as they move through undefined spaces. Occasional domestic objects – a vintage wall phone or wing-backed chair – take on the air of ghostly presences. This world seems a dank and shadowy place, rife with hidden identities, unspoken agendas and implied violence.

Flynn’s dozen paintings, on display at the Herringer Kiss Gallery in Calgary until March 27, relate to the Troubles in Northern Ireland – three decades of bombings and gun battles, a terrible time when men disappeared mysteriously in the dead of night and families grieved for children caught in the crossfire.  

Flynn, although born in Canada, has close ties to his extended family back in Northern Ireland, and has spent much time there, including childhood visits to his grandfather’s home near the village of Forkhill in South Armagh, a stronghold of the IRA. The house was just 20 feet from the border with the Republic of Ireland and the site of clandestine comings and goings, he says. “I was a kid watching all this trying to figure it out, trying to navigate it. I could sense the urgency. There was a lot of stuff going on.”

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Brian Flynn, “The Meeting,” 2018

oil and photo transfer on linen, 60" x 72"

Flynn, who earned his Master’s degree at the Belfast campus of Ulster University in 2003, is a dual citizen and maintained studios in both Canada and Northern Ireland for two decades. He chooses his words with care, his voice edged with anxiety. He worries about revealing too much, particularly when he talks about the genesis for this project, a meeting two summers ago with four former IRA members who were released from prison when the Good Friday Agreement of 1988 ended the conflict. 

The meeting in a nearby village, set up through intermediaries on a first-name-only basis, gave Flynn more insight into the Troubles. He began his research by asking the men why they got involved with the IRA. Mostly they talked about being treated as second-class citizens, about feeling oppressed and wanting to do something for their community. But he also asked things only of interest to an artist – the type of clothes they wore and the quality of the light, for instance. He was careful with his questions. “I grew up with that idea, just being careful what you say. Even now, it’s not near as bad … but still I’m careful, just by habit … I knew what not to ask them.” 

Flynn recreates that encounter in The Meeting, using his friends as stand-ins. He shows himself, sitting ringed in their semi-circle at a table, where they drank tea and ate cookies from a trolley. Two men are positioned with their backs towards viewers, while the other two are shown in profile, their faces dimly lit and blurred. It would be hard to identify them in a police line-up, yet, somehow, they seem familiar. The legs of their chairs look like an art school exercise, carving out negative space and heightening the visual contrast. Loosely painted floral wallpaper, a metaphor for how violence leached into the domestic sphere, seems an unlikely backdrop. As airy as the men are dense, it almost resembles camouflage, and seems painted to both evoke and deny pattern recognition.

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Brian Flynn, “Volunteer 3,” 2021

oil, cold wax medium and photo transfer on linen, 46.5" x 34"

Another painting, Recognized, shows a fellow walking past a line of men headed in the opposite direction. The man bringing up the rear shares a glance with the foreground figure. It is based on a story Flynn heard about a man who was walking home one night and encountered a group of hooded IRA operatives toting machine guns. One of them tells the passerby: “Shouldn’t you be in your bed?” In that chilling moment, the passerby recognizes his brother’s voice.

As with other paintings in the series, the men’s bodies are painted but their faces are photo transfers that Flynn covers with cold-wax medium to obscure their identity. Their clothing is painted with large brushes in various blacks that Flynn mixes himself. Although the men seem like dark and unified masses, the surface treatment picks up traces of light that suggests inner turbulence.

Flynn himself recalls walking back from the Forkhill pub in the pitch dark of the countryside and passing 40 British soldiers on night patrol. “It was like ghosts walking past me. You could see them, and they would look at us and we would look at them …They were probably scared. I was scared.”

Flynn is reluctant to talk much about his family’s role in the Troubles, preferring to let people draw their own conclusions. Perhaps, he’s not sure himself, given the secrecy that shrouded such things. “You’d never know,” he says. “No one ever talked about it.” His father, he says, emigrated to Canada so his children would escape the cycle of violence. Essentially, Flynn is telling, as he puts it, "a story that must remain faceless, nameless and without evidence."

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Brian Flynn, “Border House, South Armagh," 2021

oil, cold wax medium and photo transfer on canvas, 48" x 60"

The home of Flynn's grandfather is featured in Border House, South Armagh, based on a photograph Flynn says was published in the Toronto Star. A band of light to one side that leads into a hazy mist is a metaphor for the border. “There’s a lot of stories that went on there,” he says. “There’s a presence to the house. I always loved going to that house because I remember how dangerous it felt outside the house. But when I was in the house with my family, my uncles – just the presence of them, they were always so strong – my grandmother, my aunt – I felt so safe in that house.” 

Hearing Flynn’s stories, it’s easy to imagine the trauma held within the community and others like it. Flynn acknowledges a continuing struggle with anxiety, even now. “Yeah, it’s something you live with every day,” he says. “The anxiety – every day you battle it.” He says he has a show lined up for the fall in the Nickle Galleries at the University of Calgary and is working with British-born curator and artist Dick Averns to exhibit the series overseas. He hopes it will help prompt conversations as part of the healing process.

For his part, Averns describes the series as a "beguiling" look at group psyche, individual identity and human vulnerability. "With colonization and shaded political undercurrents paying a prominent role in Brian's upbringing – realities that shape many peoples' worldview – his art is brooding yet arresting: offering emotive pathways for artful reflection, inner contemplation and ultimately, self-reconciliation."

Flynn acknowledges that painting has helped him deal with difficult memories. “It gave me a voice ... and allowed me to get it out of my system,” he says. “After I have it hanging up in front of me, it’s comforting for me.” ■ 

Brian Flynn: Recognized at the Herringer Kiss Gallery in Calgary from Feb. 27 to March 27, 2021.

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