Lot 102: Kevin Sharkey - The Dreamer

Artwork Information:

Signed: Yes

Framed: No

Original: Yes

Numbered Edition: No

Edition Info: N/A

Artist Information:

Kevin Sharkey was born in St Patrick's Mother and Baby Home in Dublin in 1961, but was brought up in Killybegs, County Donegal. His birth father was a Nigerian student at the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland, and his birth mother was of Irish descent. With no state supports available for single parents, adoption was the societal norm. Kevin was adopted by the Sharkey family at a very young age. As a child he took part in Irish dancing, which won him 37 medals before the age of 12. He was also a runner-up in the all-Ireland Disco dancing championship at Zhivago nightclub at the age of 16.

His art career began at the age of 12 where he experimented with oils on canvas and bright colours, inspired by the Donegal landscape and scenery.

Kevin has been a full-time artist since 1985 and has developed his art through many mediums, his style being known for abstract, modern work, with bright and textured colours throughout. He has exhibited throughout the world, Dublin, London, Ibiza, Amsterdam, and New York, to name but a few, gaining a reputation as one of Irelands’ leading modern artists, and gathering a strong collector base along this journey. He was also briefly a photographer and a model, photographed by David Bailey.

Sharkey regularly collaborated with Irish rock band, The Boomtown Rats, and German disco group Boney M., writing lyrics and melodies for both. He wrote the latter group's 1989 single Everybody Wants to Dance Like Josephine Baker. Sharkey had a small part in Father Ted where he played a priest named Father Shaft in two episodes. His most famous line, coming after a nun asked him what he thought of all the work being done in Africa by priests, was ``Sure I wouldn't know, I'm from Donegal``. Sharkey was also a farmhand in the Irish TV series Celebrity Farm where he was the fourth farmhand to be evicted. Irish singer and songwriter Bob Geldof was the first person to buy a Sharkey painting, with other collectors of his work including Charles Saatchi, Rosie Huntington Whitley, Michael Portillo, Courtney Love, Whitney Houston, Matt Lucas, and the President of Ireland Michael D. Higgins.

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