Artist Kevin McAleenan: ‘I can’t give myself to the abstraction of a Scully but I do nod in that ­direction’

Art: What Lies Beneath

Twenty One by Kevin McAleenan

Niall MacMonagle

Growing up in the 1960s, in a large housing estate in Banbridge, Co Down, Kevin McAleenan could see “the zig-zag roof of the old linen factory, long rolling fields and unending drumlins” from his front window.

During the 1970s, “the ­Troubles formed a background to life” and though the estate was mixed, “a rare thing in those days, we rarely felt the ­tensions of most other towns in the North. There was a sense of freedom to wander far and wide”.