Sir Billy Connolly laughed hard at the notion his latest career title – artist – is likely to help him achieve immortality.
“Like Woody Allen I would prefer to achieve immortality through not dying but, in all honesty, my art has nothing to do with fame, legacy or immortality,” he said. “It’s just another step that has taken me completely by surprise.”
Sir Billy was in Glasgow city centre yesterday to launch his worldwide exclusive artwork ‘And On Monday, God Made The World’.
It will be unveiled during preview events for collectors at Castle Fine Art galleries in London and Glasgow, before being launched online today.
And his work has been translated into sculpture for the first time.
However the 77-year-old insisted he never set out to become an artist at all. “My manager saw my drawings and sent them to the gallery,” he recalled.
“And they loved them and said they wanted to do a show. It was at that point he came back to me and told me this. And I thought ‘This is great.’
“I then began to be embarrassed about the idea of artists seeing my work but thought ‘F*** it. Don’t become obsessed by that idea.’”
Even when his work was being exhibited at galleries in London, and achieving great reviews, he struggled to self-identify as an artist.
“What was hard to consider people could actually somehow like the work at whatever level. But they seem to love it.”
The work has been described as surrealist automatism, and likened to cave paintings from the Aurignacian period (40,000-25,000 BC).
Photograph by Colin Mearns
“I’ve no idea what that is,” he grinned. “ I don’t understand art-speak.”
He added; “One drawing is figure with two heads that somebody thought must be a comment on the state of matrimony.
None of it is a comment on anything.”
Surely some it is prompted by recollection? A person?
There’s a great drawing of a piano player with his leg on the keyboard.
Is it Elton-inspired? “Yes, it is,” he admitted.
“And someone bought it recently for Tom Jones’ birthday.”
It’s a surprise Elton didn’t buy it? “He likes photographs.” He laughed: “So f*** him.”
It’s a rebellious drawing, of a piano player with his leg up on the instrument, reflecting the rebel in himself? “I hope so,” he laughed. “And on the side of the piano it says ‘Bitch’.
The comedy legend revealed he only took up drawing 10 years ago. Yet, he would have loved to have drawn as a small boy in Glasgow.
He recalled being enchanted with two of his schoolboy pals Tony Fleming “who was beyond good” and Tim McGlyn: “Tony could do spacecraft that were donut-shaped and Lancaster bombers and they were brilliant. Tim and I used to do cartoons together, with me doing the funny words in the bubbles.”
Is this appearance as a gallery artist in some way a homage to the talent of his schoolboy pals? “Oh, yes, and it’s wonderful I can be compared to these guys. I was never part of the drawing group, but I am now.”
Sadly, art teachers never saw the possibility in the young Connolly. “No. But they were great, though. They were kind to me.”
Sir Billy Connolly’s new career strand, he agreed, is inspirational. “Yes, but I’ve always been a late starter in everything I did, from playing an instrument in my 20s, or showbiz where you’re told you have to join a rep company and come through all that s***. Then you’re told you can’t write a play without training. But I sat down one day and said ‘I’m going to write one.
“But Scotland has long been the place where you’re told what you can’t do. Until you do it. I believe if you want to write a poem, do it. Don’t wait for permission. If you want to be a comedian get your a*** up onto a stage. You can do it even if you’re 90. And you can do it all.”
Florida-based Connolly accepts Parkinson’s Disease has inflicted limits on his physical actions – “some days I struggle to get out of a chair. Some days I fly up” – but not his mind and his capability.
His drawings begin with outlines, which he colours in with lots of other lines. Are they a metaphor for how he needs to live his life, always colouring in lines, via comedy, writing, performance and now art? “Yes!” he said with an emphatic wide grin. “Everything is an opportunity. And drawing is part of that for me. Sometimes I draw something now and I can’t wait to show it to people.”
He added softly: “I don’t know if what I do is ‘art’. I don’t know what it is. But I do know that ‘it’ and me get along just fine.”
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