IF you haven’t heard of David Mulholland, don’t worry. According to those who knew him, he wasn’t very interested in self-promotion and would often barter his paintings for goods and services.
Apparently his dentist built up quite a nice collection.
A steelworker’s son from South Bank, Middlesbrough, he attended the local secondary modern school until he was 15 but ended up at the Royal College of Art having shown precocious talent as an artist.
By a twist of fate, his own story and the sombre 10th anniversary of the 9/11 atrocities come together today as three of David Mulholland’s paintings go on display at the Dorman Museum in Middlesbrough.
Large and expressive, they were done in response to seeing the attacks on New York’s World Trade Centre unfold on television on the morning of September 11, 2001.
They are quite shocking images, full of anguish and confusion, pulling no punches and seemingly created in the heat of the moment.
Pat McCarthy, formerly a member of the Amber film and photography collective in Newcastle, knew David Mulholland, a fellow Teessider, for many years.
With husband Pete and other friends of the artist, Pat has arranged for these paintings, which haven’t been seen in public before, to be displayed at the Dorman Museum where there is also to be a space for quiet contemplation of the events of a decade ago.
Pat says David spent the last years of his life painting some of the momentous events that entered most of our lives through television – the conflicts in the Gulf and the Balkans and also the Asian tsunami.
While he had spent much of his life as an artist inspired by the people and industry of Teesside and the beauty of the surrounding countryside and coastline, David made a point of always producing a painting on Remembrance Sunday.
But some of his later large paintings articulate his concerns about the human cost of manmade catastrophes and natural disasters.
Arguably the worst of these came on 9/11 when a terrible tragedy unfolded on daytime television in front of millions of people powerless to help.
A press release from the Dorman explains David’s response: “Like most people, he was deeply shocked, though transfixed, by continuous reruns of the twin towers collapsing.”
