24 hours with Glyn Hughes
The puck of paint
Politics, people and a passion for colour characterise one artist’s sensual and sexual paintings
It is impossible not have fun in the company of Glyn Hughes. He has an irrepressible puckish sense of humour, the boy in him is still there. Playful and inquisitive and brimming with life.
It is fifty years next year since Glyn came to Cyprus as a young teacher at the Junior School and his love affair with the island, its peoples and its colours has not waned. His studio, an old house in Kaimakli, is wonderful, like a piece of Bohemian Paris transported to the Mediterranean. Everywhere amongst the clutter and colour are things to catch your attention and imagination – huge canvasses waiting to be finished, newspaper cuttings of a dying Che Guevara, an old stone trough, faded tiles. It’s a treasure trove of memories and memorabilia, quirky and individual like its owner.
At 74 Glyn still has the energy and enthusiasm of a much younger man. He has just got back from a major retrospective of his work staged in Wales. One table is scattered with piles of photographs of the paintings and the people. There is a shot of a group of women, including Katie Clerides MP, all former students of his from The English School who had made the special trip to be there at the opening. Many of the paintings have been lent from private collections here on the island. Transported to a new venue and hung together for the first time they look sensational.
Glyn is an early riser, often awake at 4.30am before dawn, he has been a life-time reader of The Guardian, and it is in these early hours that he will catch up on the world. He still makes the journey to collect his copy from Eleftheria Square. Politics, people and a passion for colour are all reflected in his paintings. He is at pains to point out that he does not consider himself original, that he has inevitably been influenced by artists such as Picasso or Gillian Ayres, but this modesty and honesty are typical of him. There is no pretension about Glyn. As he says, “what you see is what you get”.
Breakfast consists of walnuts and Weetabix. He tells a story of how long time ago he was recommended walnuts to cure cramp. They have worked. He asks me if I think he is “manic”. I don’t, but he does have this mercurial quality. This ability to think and live at a faster speed than many others, as if he has more to achieve than there is time to do it in. Life is very precious to Glyn, he doesn’t like to waste a second of it. Illness has recently meant that he must take things a little more easily but even on his trip to the hospital he finds moments of pleasure and pathos. A Filipino child saying a cheery hello to him on the bus; the struggle of an old woman with her zimmer frame; the sights and sounds of the city. He is constantly aware and awake to the world. There are very few days, if any, when he is not painting. Currently, he has three huge canvasses waiting to be completed. He often works on pieces simultaneously. Painting is a compulsion and he cannot imagine a life without creativity. If he doesn’t finish them in two weeks, he says he never will.
As a young man, his first love was the stage, he auditioned for RADA and there is still that enjoyment of things theatrical inside him, many of his large batiks were used in set design. There is a showman in Glyn, he loves singing and dancing, a product he thinks of being brought up in the Welsh tradition of performance and Eisteddfods but he admits there is also an anger. He is not sure exactly what fuels this anger, certainly he cares deeply about people and injustice, he has been involved in his quiet way with numerous acts of personal and public generosity to help others. He has witnessed first-hand the changing fortunes of Cyprus. He stayed put during the troubles, sleeping in fields before returning to set up a studio close to the “green line”. People transcend politics: maybe it is this journey to discover the root of his anger that fuels his drive.
His afternoons will either be working on his canvasses, or jotting down ideas for new work: the world is an endless source of curiousity for Glyn. He cannot imagine ever being bored or lonely. Unlike many artists he still enjoys seeing the work of others and encouraging new talent. Often his evenings will be spent attending galleries and writing about art.
Glyn Hughes is wrong about one thing. He is not only original, he is unique. Few people have the exuberance for life and the ability to wake each morning and see the world afresh as he does. His paintings have a raw spontaneity about them. They are sexual and sensual. He takes issue with those who only view them as phallic, that called his Kyrenian range “dancing willies”, they are much more complex and deeply layered than that. He likes it when people respond to his art in a natural way, notice the textures and the forms, the complex narratives he weaves into them. He tells me that his pleasure at the retrospective and the accompanying catalogue was in leaving something tangible behind: proving, “he has not wasted his life”.
Nowadays, since having a minor stroke, it is early to bed to recharge his batteries, but he has no complaints of getting older, “there is always someone worse off than you – so don’t laugh at them only laugh at your own tears”. Feeling sorry for himself is not in Glyn’s book, every day is an adventure of colour and form and freedom and most of all fun. He is certainly not wasting his life: he is living it.
