Navan native artist Shay Culligan... A fly in the arts world ointment

Boston-based Navan native visual artist Shay Culligan just finished staging his first solo art exhibition in eight years, at the Savin Gallery in Boston’s newly gentrified Savin Hill district.

"It’s really hip here now, not like the old days when Savin Hill was an Irish ghetto affectionately known as "Stab n’ Kill'," says Shay. "Now it’s quite gay, chic, unaffordable, home to potential well-heeled collectors - bring it on!"

After 10 years practicing serigraphy (silkscreen printed art), Shay reverted back to painting in oils.

"I never broke through as an artist, my work was never embraced by the stuffy art establishment. I don’t play ball, I am not obedient, art world elites are easily offended by my vocal put downs of their practices and institutions, and they have long memories."

Ten years ago Shay kicked up a major stink when the then wife of a now disgraced Russian oligarch was being honoured with a prestigious curator award by the New York art world elites while she was "laundering her questionable reputation by throwing her money around. That made her immensely popular among the art crowd."

This hit home for Shay because his Russian wife and model, Marina, is an outspoken critic of the Putin dictatorship, and is now exiled in America. But nobody in the news media would run with the story, the New York Times and Boston Globe refused to publish Shay’s op-ed on the controversy, not wishing to offend their dwindling readership.

"A lot of doors closed to me back then, I staged some solo art shows in the wake of the affair, exhibitions which I could not even get reviewed, the hype was zero. Top art critics immediately blocked me on social media, I became a non-entity as an artist, persona non grata."

That’s when Shay decided to give up silkscreen printed art and returned to the traditional medium of oil on canvas.

"I just paint for myself now, I gave up trying to conquer the idiotic clique that is the official art world, those pompous buffoons who sit around congratulating themselves on their manoeuvres. I deliberately stopped selling my art, refusing all offers for sales and commissions, I was much criticised for this stubborn stance. When one is marginalised one’s prices dwindle, sorry to disappoint the bargain hunters."

Despite being proven right about the oligarchs, Shay remains marginalised by the art establishment. He continues to mock the art world elites, from high end dealers and galleries to stuffy museum curators and compliant art critics, all peddling one narrative which is a massive lie: that the chosen few elite visual artists that they have anointed for success, both living and dead, are uniquely talented while the remaining tens of millions of artists, like Shay, are mediocre and unworthy of attention.

"The chosen few sacred cow celebrity artists are quite mediocre, look at their work that sells for millions at auction. Those in attendance at Sotheby’s or Christie’s never clap when a so-called masterpiece is unveiled on stage prior to auction. But once the multi-million dollar bid is accepted they burst into rapturous applause. What does that tell us about the high-end art world? They don’t care about art, they are obsessed with money, and their attempts at ultra-control has them championing garbage art, I cannot believe how many stupid wealthy collectors there are out there feeding this money trough. Picasso, Modigliani, Rothko, Basquiat, Hockney, Hirst, Emin, Scully, Koons, all mediocre artists in my opinion. But the public are also suckers for this nonsense, because many who think that they like art, have to be told which artists that they are supposed to like, they are unwittingly programmed. If you pluck a so-called fine art lover from the street and ask them to name their 10 favourite painters you will get a laundry list of celebrity sacred cow artists that have been validated by the so-called experts, no mention of any obscure yet talented artists who never broke through. Why is that? It’s because people are programmed, the art establishment is selling a lie, they control the narrative, and the art world money train will not be derailed."

Shay spent the last decade working in graphic design and commercial photography, while also allowing digital reproductions of his art to be licensed and sold, but he refused to part with his originals. Some 30 such reproductions now decorate seven floors of the chic $20 million North Point residential development in Lechmere, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

"How is it that digital reproductions of my art sell well, but there is little demand for my originals? The plot thickens…"

Shay applied to exhibit in the Solstice Art Centre in his hometown of Navan in 2008, but was offered instead Toradh Gallery in Ashbourne, which he regretted doing.

"I shipped an entire exhibit of 23 original works across the Atlantic and put on a decent show, even made some sales. But the entire turnout at the reception was from my own personal mailing list, the Toradh had no regulars. But I showed that I meant business and that I could deliver."

As for Shay’s current show, 'High Maintenance, Blonde & Beyond', he has since lifted his sales embargo on his originals, actioning his art to raise money for Ukrainian causes, and there was a good turnout at the Savin Gallery.

But predictably, the exhibition was not reviewed in the art news media, Shay remains an irritant to so-called experts who wish he’d just go away. The entire show consisted of realistic oil portraits of glamorous females, many of them modelled by Marina.

"I would not call them Marina portraits, in most instances she plays the role of a woman in specific situations, conveying the human condition, expressing moods that many young women can identify with.

One attendee suggested that the show was representing the role of young women in the me-too era, a theory which Shay found to be laughable.

"In one painting my model is devouring a bunch of grapes, don’t read too much into that." Nevertheless the role of women in American society is re-entering a dark period as Shay predicts that a woman’s right to choose is about to be taken away by America’s right wing nuts.

"Who knows where this is all going?

"I paint Marina because she is a great model, she poses for my paintings and I turn a blind eye when she over-shops, it’s a good arrangement all around." Perhaps a hint at the High Maintenance exhibition title!