Seamus Heaney 13/4/1939 - 30/8/2013

Very sad yesterday to hear of the sudden death of Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney.
I met Seamus a few times. He had that way of talking to you, while standing in a hall packed with his enthusiastic and determined admirers, as if you were the only other person in the room.  Seamus was a charming, sexy, mischievous, lovely man.

I was exhibiting the Yeats in Love series in Galway in 2009. President Higgins (Michael D as he was that day) kindly agreed to open the exhibition and after the event asked me what I intended to draw next. I admitted I hadn't had much of a chance to think about it. 

"Why don't you do a series on Seamus Heaney?" 

I considered this and then remarked,

"Well he does have fabulous eyebrows"

Being a girl who keeps her promises I repaired to my office and began researching Seamus.

I asked a close friend of his if he could give me some small bits of information I could use.

I wanted to do an amusing series of pictures about Seamus but did not want to be the very first person in the world to insult or offend him. I wanted to draw him with some of the things that meant something. His awards. His remarkable hair. A jar of Tadpoles. His favourite shirts. The squadrons of women who followed him around everywhere he went (the "Heaneyboppers").

Picking up tiny stories I'd heard like bits of string, I slowly put a couple of drawings together. 

One drawing said he needed to be reading in his study and I wanted the book to be something relevant.
 I asked his friend, 

 "What might Seamus read in his spare time?"

Expecting the answer to be oh, Plato or Horace or Yeats.

"The Ben Sherman Catalogue" came the reply.