Artist and Athenaeum Works of Art Committee member Fiona Graham-Mackay speaks about painting the superb portrait of the late Member and poet Seamus Heaney that hangs in the Smoking Room, touching on her process and giving a glimpse of her time with her remarkable sitter in a warm, moving and fascinating account with some unexpected turns.

The premiere of this video at 6pm on 25th June 2020 will be followed by an online discussion with Fiona Graham-Mackay, introduced by Member Michael Hockney who suggested that she paint the poet. The details for joining the meeting were sent to Members by Christina on 23rd June 2020.

The portrait of Seamus Heaney has been superimposed on the video so viewers can easily see what the artist is discussing. Behind her in the studio, the portrait of the writer and poet Lemn Sissay is visible, which was commissioned by BBC Radio 4 as part of a series by Mrs Graham-Mackay called The Painter and the Poet. The portrait was unveiled at the Foundling Museum, London where Lemn Sissay is a Foundling Fellow and Trustee, and was shown in the National Portrait Gallery BP Portrait Award exhibition in 2017.

Fiona Graham-Mackay was an MA student with Quentin Blake at the Royal College of Art. She then took over a studio in Paris before returning to London to work for international magazines and British publishers as an illustrator. Her portraits have been shown in the National Portrait Gallery and the Spring Collection of the Portrait Artists at the Mall Galleries.

The BBC commissioned Fiona to do six programmes painting among others, the actress Juliet Stephenson and the poet Andrew Motion. A television series on the same subject is now in pre-production. Her portrait of Ed Waston, the male principal at the Royal Ballet is due to be shown at the Mall next year and Ed Smith, the pro chancellor of the University of Birmingham is to be unveiled this coming autumn. 2021 will be Fiona’s tenth season teaching in Venice, Florence and Sicily and she has this month been commissioned to write a book on portrait painting.

Seamus Heaney, who was also a playwright and translator, is widely recognized as one of the major poets of the 20th century. A native of Northern Ireland, Heaney lived for many years in Dublin. He was the author of over 20 volumes of poetry and criticism and edited several widely used anthologies, and his first major published volume, Death of a Naturalist (1966), is among his best-known works. He won the 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature "for works of lyrical beauty and ethical depth, which exalt everyday miracles and the living past." Heaney taught at Harvard University (1985-2006) and served as the Oxford Professor of Poetry (1989-1994).

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