On the Town: While Paul McCartney was blasting out the hits at the RDS, Jack Donovan was the headline act at the Cross Gallery on Francis Street, Dublin.
The long-awaited show was attended by friends and family of Donovan, former head of Limerick School of Art and Design from 1962 to 1978, and then artistic director of the college until he retired six years ago.
"A lot of my imagery comes from childhood - Duffy's Circus and bits of family history," Donovan explains. "It's satirical, I suppose."
"I'm a compulsive painter, always have been - in winter-time, particularly the long winter nights. I think a lot of creativity is a kind of a neurosis. If you're not painting, you are more neurotic than when you are working. In the summertime I try not to paint as much. I love my garden and I ease off on the painting."
"Jack has always been his own man," says Campbell Bruce, chairman of the Contemporary Irish Art Society, whose wife, artist Jackie Stanley, missed the show, choosing the former Beatle over the Limerick-born Donovan.
Mairín Cullen, from Dún Laoghaire, viewed the work with her grand-daughter, Rachel Cullen (6), who declared Hunt Master's Wife to be her favourite painting in the show.
Merce Canadell, a sculptor from Barcelona, said Nude With Cat was her choice because "the sky and the beach look so far away".
Donovan's wife, Eileen, was with the couple's adult children, Dan and Jane. Jane brought along her daughter, Finn Lizzy (another six-year-old), too.
Others in attendance included art critic Ciarán Bennett, German architect Astrid Rugbarth, and former antiques dealer Henry Nash.
Donovan is 70 next year, so art-lovers can look forward to a retrospective exhibition in Limerick's City Gallery in Pery Square. The exhibition runs at the Cross Gallery until Saturday, June 14th.