Phil Kelly:THE IRISH-BORN painter Philip Kelly, who was based in Mexico City since 1989 and became a naturalised Mexican citizen in 1999, was known for his colourful, exuberant work – and for his lively personality and hospitable nature.
His paintings depicted city life, the urban and rural landscape and the human figure.
Kelly was born in Dublin in 1950, the second of two sons. His father was Geoffrey Kelly, an architect, and his mother was Elizabeth Walker, originally from Northumbria. The family lived in Bray, Co Wicklow, but moved to Birmingham within a few years of Phil’s birth.
His father he remembered as being particularly strict. Mealtimes were accompanied by Wagnerian opera played on the gramophone and speaking was forbidden. On Phil’s recollection, he was only 10 when his mother died.
From 1962 he was sent to the English public school, Rugby, where Jeremy Paxman was a fellow student. Kelly hated the school and was eventually expelled.
Because he wanted to work with animals, he set off for western Kenya with the Brathay Exploration Group, the youth exploration charity, on an expedition to study the bongo, a spiral-horned antelope.
Back in England, he studied special education at the University of Bath. After university he set off travelling in Europe, settling in Portugal for a time. He taught English and also managed have his first solo exhibition, in the Boa Vista Gallery, Azeitao, in 1974.
During the latter half of the 1970s, he was based in London, although he did travel to the United States, where he spent time in Chicago and New York City.
He continued to exhibit and sell work in the UK. Often when he travelled, he said, his love of jazz decided his destination.
Once he had begun to exhibit, he was prolific in terms of both painting and exhibitions, despite having to subsidise his art with a succession of incidental occupations, including truck driver and film extra, until he was about 40.
He originally arrived in Mexico City in 1983 with, he recalled, $50 in his pocket.
Within a day he had a job teaching English – despite his complete lack of Spanish – and somewhere to live.
He described it as a hellish existence, though, starting at five in the morning and having to negotiate the “functioning chaos” of the city all day to get to classes in widely diverse locations, leaving hardly any time or energy for painting.
He was away in September 1985 when a severe earthquake struck, killing an estimated 10,000 people, including his girlfriend, and destroying the building in which they lived, along with all his work.
He retreated to England, but it seemed dull and colourless after the vibrancy of Mexico; severely depressed by 1989, he returned there, this time settling for good. Arriving was, he said, like slipping on a comfortable jacket. He felt at home.
Almost immediately he met and began a relationship with Ruth Munguia, a cultural administrator, whom he had met briefly in 1985. They married in 1990, and their daughters, Ana Elena and Maria José, were born in 1993 and 1997 respectively.
The pulse of Mexico City is at the heart of his work. He relished the clamour and unpredictability of the sprawling metropolis and the everyday dramas that punctuated his 20-minute walk to his studio every morning.
He enjoyed “reading the streets”, as he termed it, and he liked the heightened awareness of life and death that characterises Mexican culture.
He also found Mexico hospitable. When the art collector Patrick J Murphy visited the city in 1996, he was amazed to see an exhibition, Babel Descifrada, devoted to the work of an Irish artist he had never heard of in the Museum of Modern Art.
That led indirectly to Kelly exhibiting in Ireland in 1997, at the Frederick Gallery. He has shown consistently in Ireland since. There is currently an exhibition of his work at Hillsboro Fine Art in Dublin.
Coincidentally, the chef Rick Stein happened to see his work in London in 1996 and loved it. He became a loyal collector and also commissioned the artist to make paintings for his seafood restaurant in Padstow, Cornwall.
In the 1990s, Kelly played the role of Ireland’s unofficial cultural attache in Mexico. The then Mexican ambassador to Ireland, Daniel Dultzin, routinely suggested that Irish visitors call on him. A formidable number did and enjoyed the experience.
They included President Mary McAleese during her first term, Seamus Heaney, Síle de Valera, Robert Ballagh, broadcaster Rodney Rice, painter Philippa Bayliss and many more.
He had been ill for several years with hepatitis and related complications.
He is survived by his wife, Ruth Munguia, and their daughters, Ana Elena and Maria José.
Phil Kelly, born September 7th, 1950; died August 1st, 2010