The renowned Belfast artist Joe McWilliams died on October 7th. Born in 1938, he was educated at St Malachy’s College, and progressed to the Belfast College of Art to study painting, where he met his future wife Catherine May, a fellow art student.
Joe continued his studies, taking a degree in art history and education in the late 1970s from the Open University while teaching full-time in St Gabriel’s Secondary School and then at the Schools for the Deaf and Blind.
His accumulated knowledge and skill reached prominence when he was appointed lecturer in art education at the Ulster Polytechnic, inspiring his student art teachers with a love of their subject and enabling them to build a foundation towards a successful art career.
On retirement from lecturing in 1986, together with his wife Catherine he opened the Cavehill Gallery in their large, stylish Victorian home, encouraging local artists while building up a clientele of art lovers. They continued their own painting careers, and their gallery was a lighthouse amidst he Troubles, with so many of us enjoying their hospitality, their conversations and their humour in the company of their two children, Jane, a television producer and Simon, a celebrated artist in his own right.
Joe was awarded the silver medal at the Royal Ulster Academy in 1988, and the Belfast News Letter prize for painting in 1994, the same year he was elected an academician of the Royal Ulster Academy (RUA). He exhibited annually with the RUA and served as its distinguished president from 2000 until 2004. He elevated the Royal Ulster Academy's exhibitions by engaging notable adjudicators, such as the painter Dr Ian McKenzie Smith, former director of Aberdeen art gallery and museums, and the painter Anthony Green, RA, who was also an invited artist in 2004.
He wrote many scripts for BBC radio and presented his own script of The Way that I Went.
His paintings have been exhibited in Ireland, Britain, Europe and the US.
Joe McWilliams was a bon viveur, raconteur, educator, an informed, eloquent speaker and above all, a great painter of the political scene. He wrote knowledgeably on the visual arts for art journals and the Irish News.
He will be sadly missed by all, in particular by the artistic community of his native Belfast and we, in the Royal Ulster Academy, owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude for the effort he expended in developing the RUA, culminating in the vibrant exhibition which opens in the Ulster Museum onOctober 16th. Joe's prize-winning painting Christian Flautists outside St Patrick's will be silent testimony to the man and his craft.
President,
Royal Ulster Academy